The Story Of Philosophy Will Durant

THE STORY

OF

PHILOSOPHY

BY

WILL DURANT

NEW REVISED EDITION
ILLUSTRATED

GARDEN CITY PUBLISHING CO., INC,

NEW YORK

Socrates

TO MY WIFE

Grow strong, my comrade . . . that you may stand
Unshaken when I fall; that I may know
The shattered fragments of my song will come
At last to finer melody in you ;

That I may tell my heart that you begin
Where passing I leave off, and fathom more.

PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION

APOLOGIA PRO LEBRO SUO
I

My publishers have ashed me to use the occasion given by a
new edition of The Story of Philosophy to discuss the general
question of “outlines,” and to consider some of the short-
comings of the volume. 1 am glad of this opportunity to ac-
knowledge these, and to express with dH the weakness of mere
words the gratitude that 1 must always feel for the generosity
with which* despite so many defects, the American public has
received this book.

< The “ outlines ” came because a million voices called for them .
Human knowledge had become unmanageably vast; every sci-
ence had begotten a dozen more, each subtler than the rest;
the telescope revealed stars and systems beyond the mind of
man to number or to name; geology spoke in terms of millions
of years, where men before had thought in terms of thousands;
physics found a universe in the atom, and biology found a
microcosm in’ the cell; physiology discovered inexhaustible
mystery in every organ, and psychology in every dream; an-
thropology reconstructed the unsuspected antiquity of man ,
archeology unearthed buried cities and forgotten states, his-
tory proved dll history false, and painted a canvas which only
a Spengler or an Eduard Meyer could vision as a whole;
theology crumbled, and political theory cracked; invention
complicated life and war, and economic creeds overturned
governments and inflamed the world; philosophy itself, which
had once summoned all sciences to its aid in making a coherent
image of the world and an allwring picture of the good, found
its task of coordination too stupendous for its courage, ran

VI

PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION

away from all these battlefronts of truth, and hid itself in rec-
ondite and narrow lanes, timidly secure from the issues a/nd re-
sponsibilities of life. Human knowledge had become too great
for the human mind.

All that remained was the scientific specialist, who knew
“ more and more about less and less,” and the philosophical
speculator, who knew less and less about more and more. The
specialist put on blinders in order to shut out from his vision
all the world but one little spot, to which he glued his nose.
Perspective was lost. “Facts” replaced understanding; and
knowledge, split into a thousand isolated fragments, no longer
generated wisdom. Every science, and every branch of phi-
losophy, developed a technical terminology intelligible only to
its exclusive devotees; as men learned more about the world,
they found themselves ever less capable of expressing to their
educated fellow-men what it was that they had learned. The
gap between life and knowledge grew wider and wider; those
who governed could not Understand those who thought, and
those who .wanted to know could not understand those who
knew. In the midst of unprecedented learning popular igno-
rrnice flourished, and chose its exemplars to rule the great cities
of the world; in the midst of sciences endowed and enthroned as
never bef ore, new religions were born every day, and old supers
stitions recaptured the ground they had lost. The common
rhari found himself forced to choose between a scientific priest
hood mumbling unintelligible pessimism , and a theological
priesthood mumbling incredible hopes. ■

In this situation the function of the professional teacher wa&
clear. It should have been to mediate between the specialist
arid the nation; to learn the specialist's language, as the spe-
cialist had learned .nature's, in order to break' down tjhe baf-,
riers between knowledge and heed, and -find for new truths old
terms that all literate people might understand. For if
knowledge became too great for communication, it would de-
generate into scholasticism, and the weak acceptance of au-
thority; mankind would slip into a new age of faith, worship-

PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION vii

big at a respectful distance its new priests; and civilization ,
which had hoped to raise itself upon education disseminated
far and wide< would he left precariously based upon a technical
erudition that had become the monopoly of an esoteric class
monastically isolated from the world by the high birth rate of
terminology. No wonder that all the world applauded when
James Harvey Robinson sounded the call for the removal of
these barriers and the humanization of modern knowledge.

n

» The first "outlines” the first efforts at the humanization of
knowledge, were Plato’s Dialogues. The pundits possibly
know that the Master wrote two sets of works— -one in technical
language for his students at the Academy; the other a group
of popular dialogues designed to hire the average literate
Athenian into philosophy's "dear delight." It did not seem
to Plato any insult to philosophy that it should be transformed
into literature, realized as drama, and beautified with style;
nor any derogation to its dignity that it should apply itself ;
even intelligibly, to living problems of morality and the state.
By the humor of history, his technical works were lost, and. his
popular works remain. By the irony of history it is these
popular dialogues that have given Plato his reputation in the
schools.

For us, however, the career of the outline begins with
H. G. Wells. The historians did not quite know what to do
with The Outline of History ; Professor Schapiro described it
as full of errors, and a liberal education. It was full of errors ,
as any book of large scope is bound to be; but it was an
astonishing and stimulating performance for one mind. The
journalistic genius of Mr. Wells had tied the volumes up with
the movement towards international peace, and had entered
them as an important team in the "race between education and
catastrophe.” No one wanted catastrophe, and every one
bought the book. History became popular, and historians be -

Tin PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION

came alarmed . Now it would be necessary for them to write
as interestingly as H.G. Wells.

Strange to say, two of them did. Professor Breasted, of
Chicago and Egypt, revised and improved cm old text-book ,
and Professor Robinson did the same ; an enterprising pub-
lishing firm gathered their work into two handsome volumes,
gave them a captivating title - — The Human Adventure — and
issued the best outline of dll, a masterpiece of exposition as
authoritative as a German and as clear as a Gaul. Nothing
in their field has equaled those volumes to date.

Meanwhile Hendrik Willem van Loon had romped over the
Same ground with a pen in one hand, a pencil in the other, and a
twinkle in his eyes. He cared nothing for dignity, and loved
a joke surpassing well; he went laughing down the centuries,
and pointed his moral with drawings and smiles. Adults
bought The Story of Mankind for their children, and sur-
reptitiously read it themselves. The world was becoming
Scandalously informed about history.

The appetite of the layman grew by what it fed on. There
were in America millions of men and women who had been un-
able to go to college, and who thirsted for the findings of his-
tory and science; even those who had gone through college
showed a moderate hunger for knowledge. When John Macy
published The Story of the World’s Literature thousands
welcomed it as a genial and illuminating survey of a fascinat-
ing field. And when The Story of Philosophy appeared it
had the good fortune to catch this wave of curiosity on the
rise, and to be lifted to an undreamed-of popularity. Readers
were astonished to find that philosophy was interesting be-
cause it was, literally, a matter of life and death. They passed
along the word to their friends, and soon it became the fashion
to praise, to buy, even, occasionally, to read, this book that had
been written for a few. All in all it was such a success as no
author who has known it once can ever hope to know again.

Then came the flood. Outline followed outline, “story’* fol-
lowed “stdry”; science and art, religion and law, had their

PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION m

Sforiographers, and Bekker’s slight essay was avidly; trans-
formed into The Story of Religion. Onp author produced in
qne volume' am outline of all knowledge, thereby making Wells ,
van Loon , Macy, Slosson, Breasted and the rest, superfluous.
The; public appetite was quickly, satiated; critics and profes-
sors complained of superficiality and haste, and an undertow
of resentment set in, which reached every outline from the last,
to the first. As quickly as it had come, the fashion changed;,
ito one dared any longer say a word for the humanization of
knowledge ; the denunciation of outlines was now the easy road
tai critical repute; it became the style to speak with a delicate
superiority of my non-fiction book that could be understood.
The snob movement in literature begm.

m

. Many of the - criticisms, were disagreeably just • The Story
Philosophy was, and is, shot through with, defects, First, of
a&, it was incomplete. The total omissipn of scholastic philos -
Was am outrage, forgivable only in one who had suffered
it- in college and seminary, and resented it there r
offer as rather a disguised; theology thm an honest philosophy,
kt'.ifi. true that in some cases {Schopenhauer, Mietzsche, Span*
car; Yoktaire) the exposition of doctrine was more complete
than in most histories of. philosophy, regardless of their length,
dndit w true that the very first page frankly announced:

This book is not a complete history of philosophy , It is
an. attempt to humanize knowledge by centering the story of
speculative thought around cert am. dominant personalities.
Cerfain lesser figures have been ojnitted in order that, those
selected might have the space required to make them live.

''"(Preface.) • •

Nevertheless the incompleteness remained. The worst sin of
dOr— though the critics do not seem to have noticed it— was the
omission of Chinese and Hindu philosophy. Even a “sfiorit f*

x PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION

of philosophy that begins with Socrates , and has nothing to
say about Lao-tze and Confucius, Mencius and Chwang-tze,
Buddha and Shankara, is provincially incomplete:. 1 As for
the word Story, which Juts since been so abused with use, it was
chosen partly to indicate that the record would concern itself
chiefly with the more v iicd philosophers, partly to convey the
sense that the development of thought was a romance as stir-
ring as any in history.

No apology is offered for the neglect of epistemology.
That dismal science received its due vn the chapter on Ka/nti
where for forty pages the reader was invited to consider the
puzzles of perception. This chapter should have pleased the
young pundit, for it came very near to obscurity. (However,
one professor of philosophy, in a Midwest university, sent m
the information that he had been teaching Kant for fifteen
years, and had never understood Kant's meaning until he read
this elemeritary chapter.) For the rest, the book suggested unr
amiably thdi the nature of the knowledge process' was but one
if' the many problems of philosophy; that this single problem
was unfit to absorb the attention which the savants and the
Germans hadtavisheduponiti and^ that its weary exploitation
wins largely responsible for the decadence Of philosophy. The
Ffench have never yielded to this craze for epistemology to the
exclusion of moral and apolitical, historical and religious philos-
ophy; and today even the (Germans are recovering from, 'tiC
Hear Keyserling: "Philosophy is' Essentially the completion of
science in the synthesis of wisdom. . . . Epistemology, phe-
nomenology, logic, etc., certainly are important branches of
science.” (Prec&dy) tJiey dre branches of science, like chem-
istry or anatomy.) "But it was an unmitigated evil that as
the result of this, the sense, for the, living synthesis should have
disappeared.” (Creative Understanding, New York, 1929,
p. 125.) This from a German — a Daniel come to judgment.
And Spengler describes the earlier Chinese philosophers, down

. i The first volume, of The Story of Civilization will attempt to atone for this
omission . v - " V ‘ v ' : '

PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION xi

to Confucius, as “ statesmen , regents, lawgivers, like Pythagoras
and Parmenides, like Hobbes and Leibniz . . . . They were
sturdy philosophers for whom epistemology was the knowledge
of the important relations of actual life.” (Decline of the
West, vol. i, p. 1$.) Doubtless now that epistemology is dy-
ing in Germany, it will be exported to America, as a fit return
for the gift of democracy.

The Chinese philosophers were not only averse to epistemol-
ogy, they had an almost Gallic disdain for prolonged meta-
physics. No young metaphysician could admit that Con-
fucius is a philosopher, for he says nothing about metaphysics,
and less about epistemology; he is as positivistic as Spencer or
Comte; his concern is always for morels and the state. Worse
than that, he is disreputably intelligible; and nothing could be
so damaging to a philosopher. But we “modems” have be-
come so accustomed to windy verbiage in philosophy that when
philosophy is presented without the verbiage we can with dif-
ficulty recognize it. One must pay a penalty for having a
prejudice against obscurity.

The Story tried to salt itself with a seasoning of humor, not
oily because wisdom is not wise if it scares away merriment,
but because a sense of humor, being born of perspective, bears
a near kinship to philosophy; each is the soul of the other.
But this appears to have displeased the pundits; nothing so
hurt the book with them as its smiles. A reputation for humor
is disastrous to statesmen and philosophers: Germany could
not forgive Schopenhauer his story of Unzelmann, and only
France has recognized the depth behind the wit and brilliance
of Voltaire.

I trust that the book never misled its readers into supposing
that by reading it they would become philosophers overnight,
or that they would be saved the trouble, or pleasure, of reading
the philosophers themselves. God knows there is no short-cut
to knowledge; after forty years of seeking her one finds
“Truth” still veiled, and what she shows of herself most dis-
concerting. Instead of aiming to be a substitute for philoso «

sdi PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION

pherSy the Story explicitly offered itself as an introduction and
an invitation ; it quoted the philosophers lavishly , so that the
taste for them might linger when the hook was closed; time and
again it prodded the reader to the original texts (e. g., on pp.

67,121, 289, SSI, 4® 5, 488) } and warning was given that
one reading of them Would hardly be, enough. Cf. p. 186:

, Spinoza is not to he read, he is to he studied; you roust ap-
proach him as you would approach Euclid, recognizing that
m these brief two hundred pages a man has written down his
lifetime's thought with stoic sculptury of everything super-
fluous. Do not think to find its core by running over it
< tdpidly . : . . Read the hook not all at once, hut in small *
portions at many sittings. And having finished it, consider
that you have hut begun to understand it. Read then some
commentary, like Pollock's Spinoza, or Martineau's Study ,
of Spinoza, or, better, both Finally, read the Ethics again ;
it will be a new book to you. When you have finished it a
second time you will remain forever a lover of philosophy*

It is comforting to learn that the sales of the philosophical
classics increased some two hundred per cent, after the publica-
tidfo of the Story. Many publishers have issued new editions,
particularly of Plato, Spinoza, Voltaire , Schopeiihaiier whit
Nietzsche. A high official of the New York Public Libftirfi,
icho asks to be rMmmed, reports that

ever since the publication of the Story of Philosophy we have .
had a wide and increasing demand from the public for the
philosophical classics, and our stock of them in the branch
libraries has been gradually increased. . . . Formerly, cur-
rent books about philosophy were purchased in small quanti-
ties for the system; but in the last two or three years a -
readable hew book about philosophy is purchased very gen-
erally at the outset, in anticipation of a demand which even*
tually dois develop, and quickly at that.

Let us not, then, be ashamed of teaching the people . Those
jealous ones who would guard their knowledge from the world

PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION xiii

have only themselves to blame if their exclusiveness and their
barbarous terminology have led the world to seek in books, in
lectures , and in adult education , the instruction which they
themselves have failed to give. Let them be grateful that their
haltmg efforts are aided by amateurs who love life enough to
let it humanize their teaching. Perhaps each kind of teacher
can be of aid to the other: the cautious scholar to check our
enthusiasm with accuracy , and the enthusiast to pour warmth
and blood into the fruits of scholarship. Between us we might
build up in America an audience fit to listen to geniuses , cmd
therefore ready to produce them. We are all imperfect teach-
ers, but we may be forgiven if we have advanced the matter a
little , and have done our best. We armou/nce the prologue ,
and retire; after us better players will come.

THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY has been translated into German , French,
Swedish, Danish, Jugo-Slavian, Chinese, Japanese and Hungarian. The Amer-
Soan edition alone has sold 548,826 copies.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

PAGB

Preface to the Second Edition A • v

Introduction: On The Uses of Philosophy m m 0 . « 1

CHAPTER I
PLATO

I. The Context of Plato 7

II. Socrates . . . . . . . . ... ... II

III. The Preparation of Plato’ . . . . . • ; , ., ..,19

IV. The Ethical Problem . ." . . . . . . ! . . 23

V. The Political Problem ..... . • . . . 26

VI. The Psychological Problem ..... ... 29

VII. The Psychological Solution 31

VIII. The Political Solution 40

IX. The Ethical Solution ... . . . . . • ... .. 47

X. Criticism • . ... • • • . ... .. • • • 4P

CHAPTER II

ARISTOTLE AND GREEK SCIENCE

I. The Historical Background ..... . . • 58

II. The Work of Aristotle . ... . . . . . • 62

III. The Foundation of Logic . . . ... . . . 67

IV. The Organization of Science . 72

1. Greek Science before Aristotle . . . . . . 72

2. Aristotle as a Naturalist 75

3. The Foundation of Biology . . . . . . . 7 0

V. Metaphysics and the Nature of God . . . . . . 80

VI. Psychology and the Nature of Art . . . . . . 82

VII. Ethics and the Nature of Happiness 85

VIII. Politics 90

1. Communism and Conservatism 90

2. Marriage and Education 94

3. Democracy and Aristocracy . . . . . . . 98

IX. Criticism ... 101

X. Later Life and Death 105

TABLE OF CONTENTS

FAQB

CHAPTER III
FRANCIS BACON v

I, From Aristotle to the Renais ance 107

II. The Political Career of Francis Bacon 117

III. The Essays 122

IV. The Great Reconstruction . 131

1. The Advancement of Learning . % - 133

2. The New Organon ... . . . . . . „ 141

3. The Utopia of Science . * . ... ... 148

V. Criticism ...... . • • * . . . . 152

VI. Epilogue .... .... . • • . . . 158

CllAPTER IV
SPINOZA

I. Historical and Biographical ..••••.. 161

1. The Odyssey of the Jews 161

2. The Education of Spinoza 164

3. Excommunication 167

4. Retirement and De&th . . . . ... . . . . 170

II. The Treatise on Religion and the State 178

III. The Improvement of the Intellect . • . ... .182

IV. The Ethics ............. 185

1. Nature and God . 187

2. Matter and Mind 193

3. Intelligence and Morals . .197

4. Religion and Immortality . . • • >• # . 205

V. The Political Treatise 208

VI, The Influence of Spinoza 215

TABLE OF CONTENTS

PAQB

CHAPTER V

VOLTAIRE AND THE FRENCH ENLIGHTENMENT

L Paris: (Edipe . . . . . . . • ? • . .218

II. London: The Letters on the English * . . . . . 226

III. Cirey: The Romances . . . • . . • • . . 228

IV. Potsdam and Frederick . . . . . . . . . 235

V. Les .Delices: The Essjay on Morals 240

VI. Ferney: Candide . . ... . . . . . . 244

VII. The Encyclopedia and the Philosophic Dictionary . .251

VIII. Ecrasez, I’Infame „ . . . . • . • • . . 257

IX. Voltaire and Rousseau . . . . . . . . . . 266

X. Denouement ^ <• . • 272

CHAPTER VI

IMMANUEL KANT AND GERMAN IDEALISM

I. Roads to Kant

1 . From Voltaire to Kant .

2. From Locke to Kant .

3. From Rousseau to Kant

II. Kant Himself

III. The Critique of Pure Reason .

1. Transcendental Esthetic

2. Transcendental Analytic

3. Transcendental Dialectic

IV. The Critique of Practical Reason .

V. On Religion and Reason .

VI. On Politics and Eternal Peace .

VII. Criticism and Estimate . . .

VIII. A Note on Hegel . . . .. *

276

277

279

282

285

289

291

295

296
300
303
307
311
317

i»5 l »l t#J

TABLE OF CONTENTS

PAQ3

CHAPTER VII
SCHOPENHAUER

I. The Age 326

IL The Man , . . ..... ... . * . 328

III. The World as Idea . . . . . ... . . . 335

IV. The World as Will . ... . 338

1. The Will to Live . ... . . . . . 338

2. The Will to Reproduce . . . . . ; . . * 345

V. The World as Evil . . . . . . . , . 351

VI. The Wisdom of Life . . • • . . * 358

1. Philosophy . . . • • • • . . . . . 358

2. Genius . .* ^ . . . . . . . / ' . . 363

8. Art 365

4. Religion 367

VII. The Wisdom of Death .••••••••• 369

VIII. Criticism 373

CHAPTER VIII
HERBERT SPENCER

I. Comte and Darwin 381

II. The Development of Spencer . 385

III. First Principles . . . . 395

1. The Unknowable • . . • • • • • • . 395

2. Evolution . . . 397

IV* Biology : The Evolution of Life . . . • . . . 402

V. Psychology: The Evolution of Mind . . . . . . 405

VI. Sociology: The Evolution of Society .... . . 408

VII. Ethics: The Evolution of Morals . . . . . . .417

VIII. Criticism ......•••••••. 425

1. First Principles 425

2. Biology and Psychology . 428

3. Sociology and Ethics •••••>.••• 429

IX. Conclusion 431

TABLE of contents

PAG.fi

CHAPTER IX
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE

I, The Lineage of Nietzsche .. . ....... . . 435

II. Youth. .. . . . . . . . ..... .437

III. Nietzsche and Wagner . . . ... . . . . 441

IV. The. Song of Zarathustra . ...... . . . 448

V. Hero-morality ., .. .. . . . > • . • . . . 454

VI. The Superman ..... . . *i . # . . 461

VII. Decadence . . - . * . . . . . . > . - .. . . . 465

VIII. Aristocracy* . < . . - . . . . - . . . . . . 469

IX. Criticism ... mm . . . 476

X. Finale . * . . - . . . . • ' . . . 484

' CHAPTER X

CONTEMPORARY EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHERS

: : I; Henri Bergson .' . .' .' .* . . .* .' . . . 487

; 1. The Revolt against Materialism . .* .* .* .* . 487

" ' 2. Mind and Brain .• .' . • . . . .* .' . . . 490

> ' ° 3. Creative* Evolution . * . •* . . * .* . . . . 497

4. Criticism 503

II. Benedetto Croce 507

1. The Man 507

2. The Philosophy of the Spirit 510

3. What is Beauty? 514

4. Criticism 516

III. Bertrand Russell 518

1. The Logician . . .518

2. The Reformer . . . . 523

3. Epilogue ... ... i.j • • . 526

TABLE OP CONTENTS

paob

CHAPTER XI

CONTEMPORARY AMERICAN PHILOSOPHERS

Introduction . .. . . ........ 530

L George Santayana . . . . • • • • . . . 532

1. Biographical . . . . . . . ... • • 532

2. Scepticism and Animal Faith • . • . . . . 534

3. Reason in Science . . . . . . . • • • 586

4. Reason in Religion . . • • . . . • . . 540

5. Reason in Society ....... • 544

6. Comment . • . . . .... . . . . 550

II. William, J^mes .... ....... . . . 553

1. Perscmal .... . . . ... . * , 553

2. Pragmatism 555

8. Pluralism • • • 55 8

4. Comment ... 564

III. John Dewey 565

1. Education 565

2. Instrumentalism 566

3. Science and Politics . • . . . . . . • • 571

Conclusion • . • • • • • • • • . . « . ^ • 576

Index . . . ••..••••••• • » • 570

Glossary .......•••••••*• 587

Bibliography . . • • ■ ■ * » 691

TO THE READER

This book is not a complete history of philosophy. It is an
attempt to humanize knowledge by centering the story of spec-
ulative thought around certain dominant personalities. Cer-
tain lesser figures have been omitted in order that those selected
might have the space required to make them live. Hence the
inadequate treatment of the half-legendary pre-Socratics, the
Stoics and Epicureans, the Scholastics, and the epistemologists.
The author believes that epistemology has kidnapped modern
philosophy, and well nigh ruined it ; he hopes for the time when
the study of the knowledge-process will be recognized as the
business of the science of psychology, and when philosophy will
again be understood as the synthetic interpretation of all ex-
perience rather than the analytic description of the mode and
process of experience itself. Analysis belongs to science, and
gives us knowledge; philosophy must provide a synthesis for
wisdom.

The author would like to record here a debt which he can
never repay, to Alden Freeman, who gave him education,
travel, and the inspiration of a noble and enlightened life.
May this best of friends find in these pages — incidental and
imperfect though they are — something not quite unworthy of
his generosity and his faith.

Will Durant

New York, 1926.

I

INTRODUCTION

ON THE USES OP PHILOSOPHY

There is a pleasure in philosophy, and a lure even in the
mirages of metaphysics, which every student feels until the
coarse necessities of physical existence drag him from the
heights of thought into the mart of economic strife and gain.
Most of us have known some golden days in the June of life
when philosophy was in fact what Plato calls it, “that dear de-
light” ; when the love of a modestly elusive Truth: seemed more
glorious, incomparably, than the lust for the ways of the flesh
and the dross of the world. And there is always some wistful
remnant in us of that early wooing of wisdom. “Life has
meaning,” we feel with Browning — “to find its meaning is my
meat and drink.” So much of our lives is meaningless, a self-
cancelling vacillation and futility ; we strive with the chaos
about us and within; but we would believe all the while that
there is something vital and significant in us; could #e but
decipher our own souls. We want to understand ; “life mealis
for us constantly to transform into light and flame all that
we are or meet with” ; 1 we are like Mitya ini The ’Brother a
Karamazov — “one of : those who don’t : want ; millions, but an
answer to their questions” ; we want to seize the value and per-
spective of passing things, and so to pull ourselves up out of
the maelstrom of daily circumstance. We want to know that
the little things are little, add the big things big, before it is
too late; we want to see things now as they will seem forever—
“in the light of eternity.” We want to learn to laugh in the
face of the inevitable, to smile even at the looming of death.
We want to be whole, to coordinate our energies by criticizing
and harmonizing our desires; for coordinated energy’ is the

i Nietzsche, The Joyful Wisdom, pref.

1

INTRODUCTION

9 ,

last word in ethics and politics, and perhaps in logic and meta-
physics too. “To be a philosopher,” said Thoreau, “is not
merely to have subtle thoughts, nor even to found a school,
but so to love wisdom as tp live, according to its dictates, a
life of simplicity, independence, magnanimity, and trust.”
We may be sure that if we can but find wisdom, all things else
will be added unto us. “Seek ye first the good things of the
mind,” Bacon admonishes us, “and the rest, will either be sup-
plied or its loss will not be felt .” 1 Truth will not make us.
rich, but it will make ua free.

Some ungentle reader will check us here by informing us
that philosophy is as useless as chess, as obscure as ignorance,
and as stagnant as content. “There is nothing so absurd,”
said Cicero, “but that it may be found in the books of the
philosophers.” Doubtless some philosophers have had all
sorts of wisdom except comrnon sense; and many a philosophic
flight has been due to the elevating power of thin air. Let us
resolve, on this voyage of ours, to put in only at the ports of
light, to keep out: of the muddy streams of metaphysics and the
‘knany-sounding seas” of theological dispute. But is philos-.
ophy stagnant? Science seems always to advance, while phi-
losophy seems always to lose ground. Yet this is only because
philosophy accepts the hard 'and hazardous task of dealing
with problems not yet open to the methods of science — -prob-
lems like good and evil, beauty and ugliness, order and free-
dom, life and death; so soon as a field of inquiry yields,
knowledge susceptible of exact formulation it is called science.
Every science begins as philosophy and ends as art ; it arisen
in hypothesis and fldws into achievement. Philosophy is a
hypothetical interpretation of the Unknown (as in metaphys-
ics), or of the inexactly known (as in ethips or political philos-
ophy) ; it is the front trench in the siege of truth. Science
is the captured territory ; and behind it are those secure re-
gions in which knowledge and art build our imperfect and

ID* Augments Scientiarum, VIH*

INTRODUCTION 8

marvelous world. Philosophy seems to stand still, perplexed ;
but only because she leaves the fruits of victory to her daugh-
ters the sciences, and herself passes on, divinely discontent, to
the uncertain and unexplored.

Shall we be more technical P Science is analytical descrip-
tion, philosophy is synthetic interpretation. Science wishes
to resOlve the whole into parts, the organism into organs, the
obscure into the known. It does not inquire into the values
and ideal possibilities of things, nor into their total and final
significance; it is content to show their present actuality and
operation, it narrows its gaze resolutely to the nature and
process of things as they are. The scientist is as impartial
as Nature in Turgenev’s poem * he is as interested in the leg of
a flea as in the creative throes of a genius. But the philos-
opher is not content to describe the fact; he wishes to ascertain
its relation to experience in general, and thereby to get at its
meaning and its worth ; he combines things in interpretive syn-
thesis; he tries to put together, better than before, that great
universe-watch which the inquisitive scientist has analytically
taken apart. Science tells us how to heal and how to kill;
it reduces the death rate in retail and then kills us wholesale
in war; but only wisdom — desire coordinated in the light
of all experience — can tell us when to heal and when to kill.
To observe processes and to construct means is science; to
criticize and coordinate ends is philosophy : and because itt
these days our means and instruments have multiplied beyond
our interpretation and synthesis of ideals and ends, oUr life
is full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. For a fact its
nothing except in relation to desire; it is not complete except
in relation to a purpose and a whole. Science without phi-
losophy, facts without perspective and valuation, cannot save
us from havoc and despair. Science gives us knowledge, but
only philosophy can give us wisdom.

Specifically, philosophy means and includes five fields of
Study and discourse : logic, esthetics, ethics, politics, and meta-

4 INTRODUCTION

physics. Logic is the study, of ideal method in thought and
research : observation and introspection, deduction and induc-
tion, hypothesis and experiment, analysis and synthesis — such
are the forms of human activity which logic tries to understand
and guide; it is a dull study for most of us, and yet the great
events in the history of thought are the improvements men
have made in their methods of thinking and research. Esthet-
ics isthe study of ideal form, or beauty; it is the philosophy
of art. Ethics is : the study of ideal conduct; the highest
knowledge, said Socrates, is the knowledge of good and evil,
the knowledge of the wisdom of life. Politics is the study of
ideal social organization (it is not, as one might suppose, the
art and science of capturing and keeping office) ; monarchy,
aristocracy, democracy, socialism, anarchism, feminism— these
are the dramatis ■_ personae .of ; political philosophy. And
lastly, metaphysics (which gets into so much trouble because
it is not, like the other forms of philosophy, an attempt tc
coordinate the real in the light of the ideal); is the study of
the “ultimate reality” of- all things : of the real and final nature
nf “matter” (ontology), of “mind”, (philosophical psychol-
ogy), and of the interrelation of “mind” and “matter” in the
processes of perception and knowledge (epistemology).

. These are the parts of philosophy ; but so dismembered it
loses its beauty and its joy. We shall seek it not in its shriv-
elled abstractness and formality, but clothed in the living
form of genius; we shall, study not merely philosophies, but
philosophers; we shall spend our time with the saints and. mar-
tyrs of thought, letting their radiant spirit play about us until
perhaps we too, in some measure, shall partake of what Leon-
ardo called “the noblest pleasure, the joy of understanding.”
Each of these philosophers has some lesson for us, if we ap-
proach him properly. “Do you know,” asks Emerson, “the
secret of the true scholar? In every man there is something
wherein I may learn of him; and in that I am his pupil.”
Well, surely we may take this attitude to the master minds of
history without hurt to our pride ! And we may flatter our-

INTRODUCTION:

5

selves with that other thought of Emerson’s, that when genius
speaks to us we feel a ghostly reminiscence of having ourselves,
in our distant youth, had vaguely this self-same thought which
genius now speaks, but which we had not art or courage to
clothe with form and utterance. And indeed, great men speak
to us only so far as we have ears and souls to hear them ; only
so far as we have in us the roots, at least, of that which flow-
ers out in them. We too have had the experiences they had,
but we did not suck those experiences dry of their secret and
subtle meanings : we were not sensitive to the overtones of the
reality that hummed about us. Genius hears the overtones,
and the music of the spheres ; genius knows what Pythagoras
meant when he said that philosophy is the highest music.

So let us listen to these men, ready to forgive them their
passing errors, and eager to learn the lessons which they are so
eager to teach. “Do you then be reasonable,” said old Soc-
rates to Crito, “and do not mind whether the teachers of phi-
losophy are good or bad, but think only of Philosophy herself.
Try to examine her well and truly ; and if she be evil, seek to
turn away all men from her; but if she be what I believe she
is, then follow her and serve her, and be of good cheer.”

CHAPTER I

PLATO

I. THE CONTEXT OF PLATO

I F you look at a map of Europe you will observe that Greece
is a skeleton-like hand stretching its crooked fingers out
into the Mediterranean Sea. South of it lies the great is-
land of Crete, from which those grasping fingers captured, in
the second millennium before Christ, the beginnings of civiliza-
tion and culture. To the east, across the iEgean Sea, lies Asia
Minor, quiet and apathetic now, but throbbing, in pre-Platonic
days, with industry, commerce and speculation. To the west,
across the Ionian, Italy stands, like a leaning tower in the sea,
and Sicily and Spain, each in those days with thriving Greek
colonies; and at the end, the “Pillars of Hercules” (which we
call Gibraltar), that soriibre portal through which not inany
an ancient mariner dared to pass. And on the north those
still untamed and half-barbaric regions, then named Thessaly
and Epirus and Macedonia, from which or through which the
vigorous bands had come which fathered the geniuses of
Homeric and Periclean Greece.

Look again at the map, and you see countless indentations
of coast and elevations of land ; everywhere gulfs and bays and
the intrusive sea; and all the earth tumbled and tossed into
mountains and hills. Greece was broken into isolated frag-
ments by these natural barriers of sea and soil; travel and
communication were far more difficult and dangerous then than
now; every valley therefore developed its own self-sufficient
economic life, its own sovereign government, its Own institu-
tions and dialect and religion and culture. In each case one

7

8

THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY

or two cities, and around them, stretching up the mountain-
slopes, an agricultural hinterland: such were the “city-states’*
of Euboea, and Locris, and JStolia, and Phocis, and Boeotia,
and Achaea, and Argolis, and Elis, and Arcadia, and Messenia,
and Laconia — with its Sparta, and Attica — with its Athens.

Look at the map a last time, and observe the position of
Athens: it is the farthest east of the larger cities of Greece.
It was favorably placed to be the door through which the
Greeks passed out to the busy cities of Asia Minor, and
through which those elder cities sent their luxuries and their
culture to adolescent Greece. It had an admirable port, Pi-
raeus, where countless vessels might find a haven from the rough
waters of the sea. And it had a great maritime fleet.

In 490-470 b. c. Sparta and Athens, forgetting their jeal-
ousies and joining their forces, fought off the effort of the
Persians under Darius and Xerxes to turn Greece into a col-
ony of an Asiatic empire. In this struggle of youthful Eu-
rope against the senile East, Sparta provided the army and
Athens the navy. The war over, Sparta demobilized her
troops, and suffered the economic disturbances natural to that
process ; while Athens turned her navy into a merchant fleet,
and became one of the greatest trading cities of the ancient
world. Sparta relapsed into agricultural seclusion and stag-
nation, while Athens became a busy mart and port, the meet-
ing place of many races’ of men and of diverse cults and cus-
toms, whose contact and rivalry begot comparison, analysis
and thought.

Traditions and dogmas rub one another down to a minimum
in such centers of varied intercourse; where there are a thou-
sand faiths we are apt to become sceptical of them all. Prob-
ably the traders were the first sceptics ; they had seen too much
to believe too much ; and the general disposition of merchants
to classify all men as either fools or knaves inclined them to
question every creed. Gradually, too, they were developing
science ; mathematics grew with the increasing complexity of ex-
change, astronomy with the increasing audacity of navigation.

PLATO

9

The growth of wealth brought the leisure and security which
are the prerequisite of research arid speculation; men now
asked the stars not only for guidance oil the sCas but as well
for an answer to the riddles of the universe ; the first Greek phi-
losophers were astronomers. “Proud of their achievements,”
says Aristotle, 1 “men pushed farther afield after the Persian
wars; they took all knowledge for their province, and sought
ever wider studies.” Men grew bold enough to attempt nat-
ural explanations of processes arid events before -attributed to
supernatural agencies and powers ; m agic and ritual slowly
gave way to science and control ; and philosophy begari;

At first this philosophy was physical; it looked out upon
the material World and asked what was the final and* irreducible
constituent of things. The natural termination of this line of
thought was the materialism 6f Democritus (460-360 b .- c. ) - —
“in reality there is nothing but atoms and space.” > This was
one of the main streams of Greek speculation ; it passed Under-
ground for a time in Plato’s day, but emerged in Epicurus
(342— 270), and became a torrent of eloquence in Lucretius
(98-55 b . c.). But the most characteristic and fertile devel-
opments of Greek philosophy took form with the Sophists,
travelling teachers of wisdom, who looked within upon*' their
own thought and nature, rather than out upon the world of
things. They were all clever men (Gorgias and Hippias, for
example), and many of them were profound (Protagoras,
Prodicus) ; there is hardly a problem or a solution in our cur-
rent philosophy of mind and conduct which they did not
realize and discuss. They asked questions about anything;-
they stood unafraid in the presence of religious or political ta-<
boos; and boldly subpoenaed every creed and institution to !
appear before the judgment-seat of reason. In politick they
divided into two schools. One, like Rousseau, argued that
nature is good, and civilization bad ; that by nature all men
are equal, becoming unequal only by class-made institutions ;
and that law is an invention of the strong to chain and

* Politic*, 1341 .

tP THE STORY; OF PHILOSOPHY

ride the weak. Another school, like Nietzsche, claimed that
nature is beyond good and evil; that by nature all men are
unequal; that morality is an invention of the weak to limit and
deter the strong ; that power is the supreme virtue and the
supreme desire of man; and that of all forms of government
the wisest and most natural is aristocracy.

No doubt this attack on democracy reflected the rise of a
wealthy minority at Athens which called itself the Oligarchical
Party; and denounced democracy as an incompetent sham.
In a sense there was not much democracy to denounce; for of
the 400,000 inhabitants of Athens 850,000 were slaves, with'
qut political rights of any kind; and of the 150,000 freemen
or citizens only a small number presented themselves at the
Ecclesia, or general assembly, where the policies of the state
were discussed and determined. Yet what democracy they had
was as thorough as never since;. the general assembly was the
supreme power ; and the highest official body, the JDikastqria,
or supreme court, consisted of over a thousand members (to
make bribery expensive), selected; by alphabetical rote from
the roll of all the citizens. No institution could have been,
more democratic, nor, said its opponents, more absurd.

• During the great generation-long Peloponnesian war (430'.
4,00 m e.), in which the military power of Sparta fought and,
at last defeated the naval power of Athens, the Athenian oli-
garchic party, led by Critias, advocated the abandonment of,
democracy on the score of its inefficiency in war, and secretly
lauded the aristocratic government of Sparta. Many of the
oligarchic leaders were exiled ; but wbeu at last Athens sur-
rendered, one of the peace conditions imposed by Sparta was,
the recall of these exiled aristocrats. They had hardly re-
turned when, with Critias at their head, they declared a rich
man’s revolution against the , “democratic’’ party that had
ruled during the disastrous war. ’ The. revolution, failed^ and
C citias was killed on the field of battle, , , .

Now Critias was a pupil qf. Socrates, and an uncle of
Plata

PLATO

11

H. SOCRATES

If we may judge from the bust that has come down to us
as part of the ruins of ancient sculpture, Socrates was as far
from being handsome as even a philosopher can be. A bald
head, a great round face, deep-set staring eyes, a broad and
flowery nose that gave vivid testimony to many a Symposium
— it was rather the head of a porter than that of the most
famous of philosophers. But if we look again we see, through
the crudity of the stone, something of that human kindliness
and unassuming simplicity which made this homely thinker a
teacher beloved of the finest youths in Athens. We know so
little about him, and yet we know him so much more intimately
than the aristocratic Plato or the reserved and scholarly Aris-
totle. Across two thousand three hundred years we can yet
see his ungainly figure, clad always in the same rumpled tunic,
walking leisurely through the agora, undisturbed by the bed-
lam of politics, buttonholing his prey, gathering the young
and the learned about him, luring them into some shady nook
of the temple porticos, and asking them to define their terms.

They were a motley crowd, these youths who flocked about
him and helped him to create European philosophy. There
were rich young men like Plato and Alcibiades, who relished
his satirical analysis of Athenian democracy; there were so-
cialists like Antisthenes, who liked the master’s careless pov-
erty, and made a religion of it ; there was even an anarchist
ar two among them, like Aristippus, who aspired to a world
in which there would be neither masters nor slaves, and all
would be as worrilessly free as Socrates. All the problems
that agitate human society to-day, and provide the material of
youth’s endless debate, agitated as well that little band of
thinkers and talkers, who felt, with their teacher, that life
without discourse would be unworthy of a man. Every school
of social thought had there its representative, and perhaps
its origin.

How the master lived hardly anybody knew. He never

12

THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY

worked, and he took no thought of the morrow. He ate when
his disciples asked him to honor their tables; they must have
liked his company, for he gave every indication of physiolog-
ical prosperity. He was not so welcome at home, for he ne-
glected his wife and children ; and from Xanthippe’s point of
view he was a good-for-nothing idler who brought to his fam-
ily more notoriety than bread. Xanthippe liked to talk al-
most as much as Socrates did; and they seem to have had
some dialogues which Plato failed to record. Yet she, too,
loved him, and could not contentedly see him die even after
three-score years and ten.

Why did his pupils reverence him so? Perhaps because he
was a man as well as a philosopher : he had at great risk saved
the life of Alcibiades in battle; and he could drink like a
gentleman — without fear and without excess. But no doubt
ihey liked best in him the modesty of his wisdom : he did not
daim to have wisdom, but only to seek it lovingly ; he was
visdom’s amateur , not its professional. It was said that the
oracle at Delphi, with unusual good sense, had pronounced him
the wisest of the Greeks; and he had interpreted this as an
approval of the agnosticism which was the starting-point of
his philosophy — -“One thing only I know, and that is that I
know nothing.” Philosophy begins when one learns to doubt
• — particularly to doubt one’s cherished beliefs, one’s dogmas
and one’s axioms. Who knows how these cherished beliefs be-
came certainties with us, and whether some secret wish did
not furtively beget them, clothing desire in the dress of
thought? There is no real philosophy until the mind turns
round and examines itself. GnotJu seauton, said Socrates:
Enow thyself.

There had been philosophers before him, of course: strong
men like Thales and Heraclitus, subtle men like Parmenides
and Zeno of Elea, seers like Pythagoras and Empedocles ; but
for the most part they had been physical philosophers; they
had sought for the phi/sis or nature of external things, the
laws and constituents of the material and measurable world.

PLATO

13

That is very good, said Socrates; but there is an infinitely
worthier subject for philosophers than all these trees and
stones, and even all those stars; there is the mind of man.
What is man, and what can he become?

So he went about prying into the human soul, uncovering
assumptions and questioning certainties. If men discoursed
too readily of justice, he asked them, quietly, td ti ? — what is it?
What do you mean by these abstract words with which you
so easily settle the problems of life and death? What do you
mean by honor, virtue, morality, patriotism? What do
you mean by your self? It was with such moral and psycho-
logical questions that Socrates loved to deal. Some who suf-
fered from this “Socratic method,” this demand for accurate
definitions, and clear thinking, and exact analysis, objected
that he asked more than he answered, and left men’s minds
more confused than before. Nevertheless he bequeathed to
philosophy two very definite answers to two of our most diffi-
cult problems — What is the meaning of virtue? and What is
the best state?

No topics could have been more vital than these to the young
Athenians of that generation. The Sophists had destroyed
the faith these youths had once had in the gods and goddesses
of Olympus, and in the moral code that had taken its sanction
so largely from the fear men had for these ubiquitous and
innumerable deities ; apparently there was no reason now why
a man should not do as he pleased, so long as he remained
within the law. A disintegrating individualism had weakened
the Athenian character, and left the city a prey at last to the
sternly-nurtured Spartans. And as for the state, what could
have been more ridiculous than this mob-led, passion-ridden
democracy, this government by a debating-society, this precip-
itate selection and dismissal and execution of generals, this
unchoice choice of simple farmers and tradesmen, in alpha-
betical rotation, as members of the supreme court of the land?
How could a new and natural morality be developed in Athens,
and how could the state be saved?

14

THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY

It was his reply to these questions that gave Socrates death
and immortality. The older citizens would have honored him
had he tried to restore the ancient polytheistic faith ; if he had
led his band of emancipated souls to the temples and the sacred
groves, and bade them sacrifice again to the gods of their
fathers. But he felt that that was a hopeless and suicidal
policy, a progress backward, into and not “over the tombs.”
He had his own religious faith: he believed in one God, and
hoped in his modest way that death would not quite destroy
him ; 1 but he knew that a lasting moral code could not be
based upon so uncertain a theology. If one could build a sys-
tem of morality absolutely independent of religious doctrine,
as valid for the atheist as for the pietist, then theologies might
come and go without loosening the moral cement that makes of
wilful individuals the peaceful citizens of a community.

If, for example, good meant intelligent , and virtue meant
! wisdom ; if men could be taught to see clearly their real inter-
ests, to see afar the distant results of their deeds, to criticize
and coordinate their desires out of a self-cancelling chaos into
a purposive and creative harmony — this, perhaps, would pro*
vide for the educated and sophisticated man the morality which
in the unlettered relies on reiterated precepts and external
control. Perhaps all sin is error, partial vision, foolishness?
The intelligent man may have the same violent and unsocial
impulses as the ignorant man, but surely he will control them
better, and slip less often into imitation of the beast. And in
an intelligently administered society — one that returned to
the individual, in widened powers, more than it took from him
in restricted liberty — the advantage of every man would lie
in social and loyal conduct, and only clear sight would be
needed to ensure peace and order and good will.

But if the government itself is a chaos and an absurdity,
if it rules without helping, and commands without leading, —

iCf. Voltaire’s story of the two Athenians conversing about Socrates:
“That is the atheist who says there is only one God.” Philosophical Dictiofa
ary, art. “Socrates,**

PLATO

15

how can we persuade the individual, in such a state, to obey
the laws and confine his self-seeking within the circle of the
total good? No wonder an Alcibiades turns against a state
that distrusts ability, and reverences number more than knowl-
edge. No wonder there is chaos where there is no thought,
and the crowd decides in haste and ignorance, to repent at
leisure and in desolation. Is it not a base superstition that
mere numbers will give wisdom? On the contrary is it not
universally seen that men in crowds are more foolish and more
violent and more cruel than men separate and alone? Is it
not shameful that men should be ruled by orators, who “go
ringing on in long harangues, like brazen pots which, when
struck, continue to sound till a hand is put upon them”? 1
Surely the management of a state is a matter for which men
cannot be too intelligent, a matter that needs the unhindered
thought of the finest minds. How can a society be saved, or
be strong, except it be led by its wisest men?

Imagine the reaction of the popular party at Athens to
this aristocratic gospel at a time when war seemed to require
the silencing of all criticism, and when the wealthy and let-
tered minority were plotting a revolution. Consider the feel-
ings of Anytus, the democratic leader whose son had become
a pupil of Socrates, and had then turned against the gods of
his father, and laughed in his father’s face. Had not Aris-
tophanes predicted precisely such a result from this specious
replacement of the old virtues by unsocial intelligence? 2

Then the revolution came, and men fought for it and

i Plato’s Protagoras, sect. 329.

* In The Clouds (423 b. c.) Aristophanes had made great fun of Socrates
and his “Thinking-shop,” where one learned the art of proving one’s self
right, however wrong. Phidippides beats his father on the ground that his
father used to beat him, and every debt should be repaid. The satire seems
to have been good-natured enough: we find Aristophanes frequently in the
company of Socrates; they agreed in their scorn of democracy; and Plato
recommended The Clouds to Dionysius. As the play was brought out twenty-
four years before the trial of Socrates, it could have had no great share in
bringing the tragic denouement of the philosopher’s life.

r

| 16 THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY

i

against, bitterly and to the death. When the democracy won,
the fate of Socrates was decided: he was the intellectual
I leader of the revolting party, however pacific he might himself

| have been; he was the source of the hated aristocratic philos-

I ophy ; he was the corrupter of youths drunk with debate. It

i would be better, said Anytus and Meletus, that Socrates should

j die.

! The rest of the story all the world knows, for Plato wrote

it down in prose more beautiful than poetry. We are priv-
ileged to read for ourselves that simple and courageous (if
not legendary) “apology,” or defence, in which the first martyr
of philosophy proclaimed the rights and necessity of free
thought, upheld his value to the state, and refused to beg
for mercy from the crowd whom he had always contemned.
They had the power to pardon him; he disdained to make the
appeal. It was a singular confirmation of his theories, that
the judges should wish to let him go, while the angry crowd
voted for his death. Had he not denied the gods? Woe to
him who teaches men faster than they can learn.

So they decreed that he should drink the hemlock. His
friends came to his prison and offered him an easy escape;
they had bribed all the officials who stood between him and
liberty. He refused. He was seventy years old now (399
b. c.) ; perhaps he thought it was time for him to die, and that
he could never again die so usefully. “Be of good cheer,” he
told his sorrowing friends, “and say that you are burying my
body only.” “When he had spoken these words,” says Plato,
in one of the great passages of the world’s literature, 1

he arose and went into the bath-chamber with Crito, who
bade us wait; and we waited, talking and thinking of . . .
the greatness of our sorrow ; he was like a father of whom we
were being bereaved, and we were about to pass the rest of our
lives as orphans. ... Now the hour of sunset was near, for a
good deal of time had passed while he was within. When he

iPhaedo, sections 116 - 118 , tr. Jowett

PLATO

17

came out, he sat down with us again, • . • but not much was
said. Soon the jailer . . . entered and stood by him, say-
ing: “To you, Socrates, whom I know to be the noblest and
gentlest and best of all who ever came to this place, I will
not impute the angry feelings of other men, who rage and
swear at me when, in obedience to the authorities, I bid them
drink the poison — indeed I am sure that you will not be
angry with me ; for others, as you are aware, and not I, are
the guilty cause. And so fare you well, and try to bear
lightly what must needs be; you know my errand.” Then
bursting into tears he turned away and went out.

Socrates looked at him and said: “I return your good
wishes, and will do as you bid.” Then turning to us, he said,
“How charming the man is ; since I have been in prison he
has always been coming to see me, and now see how gener-
ously he sorrows for me. But we must do as he says, Crito;
let the cup be brought, if the poison is prepared ; if not, let
the attendant prepare some.”

“Yet,” said Crito, “the sun is still upon the hill-tops, and
many a one has taken the draught late; and after the an-
nouncement has been made to him he has eaten and drunk,
and indulged in sensual delights; do not hasten then, there
is still time.”

Socrates said : “Yes, Crito, and they of whom you speak
are right in doing thus, for they think that they will gain by
the delay; but I am right in not doing thus, for I do not
think that I should gain anything by drinking the poison a
little later; I should be sparing and saving a life which is
already gone ; I could only laugh at myself for this. Please
then to do as I say, and not to refuse me.”

Crito, when he heard this, made a sign to the servant ; and
the servant went in, and remained for some time, and then
returned with the jailer carrying the cup of poison. Soc-
rates said: “You, my good friend, who are experienced in
these matters, shall give me directions how I am to proceed.”
The man answered: “You have only to walk about until
your legs are heavy, and then to lie down, and the poison will
act.” At the same time he handed the cup to Socrates, who
in the easiest and gentlest manner, without the least fear or

18

THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY

change of color or feature, looking at the man with all his
eyes, as his manner was, took the cup and said : “What do
you say about making a libation out of this cup to any god?
May I, or not?” The man answered: “We only prepare,
Socrates, just so much as we deem enough.” “I under-
stand,” he said; “yet I may and must pray to the gods to
prosper my journey from this to that other world — may this
then, which is my prayer, be granted to me.” Then, holding
the cup to his lips, quite readily and cheerfully he drank the
poison.

And hitherto most of us had been able to control our sor-
row; but now when we saw him drinking, and saw too that he
fyad finished the draught, we could no longer forbear, and in
spite of myself my own tears were flowing fast; so that I
covered my face and wept over myself; for certainly I was
not weeping over him, but at the thought of my own calam-
ity in having lost such a companion. Nor was I the first,
for Crito, when he found himself unable to restrain his tears,
had got up and moved away, and I followed; and at that
moment Apollodorus, who had been weeping all the time,
broke out into a loud cry which made cowards of us all.
Socrates alone retained his calmness : “What is this strange
outcry?” he said. “I sent away the women mainly in order
that they might not offend in this way, for I have heard that
a man should die in peace. Be quiet, then, and have pa-
tience.” When we heard that, we were ashamed, and re-
strained our tears ; and he walked about until, as he said, his
legs began to fail, and then he lay on bis back, according to
the directions, and the man who gave him the poison now
and then looked at his feet and legs; and after a while he
pressed his foot hard and asked him if he could feel ; and he
said, “No” ; and then his leg, and so upwards and upwards,
and showed us that he was cold and stiff. And then Soc-
rates felt them himself, and said, “When the poison reaches
the heart, that will be the end.” He was beginning to grow
cold about the groin, when he uncovered his face (for he had
covered himself up) and said, — they were his last words, —
“Crito, I owe a cock to Asclepius ; will you remember to pay
like debt?” “The debt shall be paid,” said Crito; “is there

PLATO

19

anything else?” There was no answer to this question; but
in a minute or two a movement was heard, and the attendant
uncovered him; his eyes were set, and Crito closed his eyes
and mouth.

Such was the end of our friend, whom I may truly call the
wisest, the justest, and best of all the men whom I have ever
known.

in. THE PREPARATION OP PLATO

Plato’s meeting with Socrates had been a turning point in
his life. He had been brought up in comfort, and perhaps in
wealth ; he was a handsome and vigorous youth — called Plato,
it is said, because of the breadth of his shoulders ; he had ex-
celled as a soldier, and had twice won prizes at the Isthmian
games. Philosophers are not apt to develop out of such an
adolescence. But Plato’s subtle soul had found a new joy in
the “dialectic” game of Socrates; it was a delight to behold
the master deflating dogmas and puncturing presumptions
with the sharp point of his questions ; Plato entered into this
sport as he had in a coarser kind of wrestling ; and under the
guidance of the old “gad-fly” (as Socrates called himself) he
passed from mere debate to careful analysis and fruitful dis-
cussion. He became a very passionate lover of wisdom, and of
his teacher. “I thank God,” he used to say, “that I was born
Greek and not barbarian, freeman and not slave, man and not
woman ; but above all, that I was born in the age of Socrates.”

He was twenty-eight when the master died ; and this tragic
end of a quiet life left its mark on every phase of the pupil’s
thought. It filled him with such a scorn of democracy, such
a hatred of the mob, as even his aristocratic lineage and breed-
ing had hardly engendered in him ; it led him to a Catonic re-
solve that democracy must be destroyed, to be replaced by the
rule of the wisest and the best. It became the absorbing prob-
lem of his life to find a method whereby the wisest and the best
might be discovered, and then enabled and persuaded to rule.
Meanwhile his efforts to save Socrates had narked hinn out

20

THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY

for suspicion by the democratic leaders ; his friends urged that
Athens was unsafe for him, that it was an admirably propitious
moment for him to see the world. And so, in that year 399
b. c., he set out. Where he went we cannot for certain say;
there is a merry war of the authorities for every turn of his
route. He seems to have gone first to Egypt ; and was some-
what shocked to hear from the priestly class which ruled that
land, that Greece was an infant-state, without stabilizing tra-
ditions or profound culture, not yet therefore to be taken
seriously by these sphinxly pundits of the Nile. But nothing
so educates us as a shock; the memory of this learned caste,
theocratically ruling a static agricultural people, remained
alive in Plato’s thought, and played its part in writing his
Utopia. And then off he sailed to Sicily, and to Italy ; there
he joined for a time the school or sect which the great Py-
thagoras had founded; and once again his susceptible mind
was marked with the memory of a small group of men set aside
for scholarship and rule, living a plain life despite the posses-
sion of power. Twelve years he wandered, imbibing wisdom
from every source, sitting at every shrine, tasting every creed.
Some would have it that he went to Judea and was moulded
for a while by the tradition of the almost socialistic prophets ;
and even that he found his way to the banks of the Ganges, and
learned the mystic meditations of the Hindus. We do not
know.

He returned to Athens in 387 b. v'., a man of forty now,
ripened to maturity by the variety ol many peoples and the
wisdom of many lands. He had lost a little of the hot enthusi-
asms of youth, but he had gained a perspective of thought in
Which every extreme was seen as a half-truth, and the many
aspects of every problem blended into a distributive justice
to every facet of the truth. He had knowledge, and he had
art; for once the philosopher and the poet lived in one soul;
and he created for himself a medium of expression in which
both beauty and truth might find room and play — the dia-
logue. Never before, we mav believe, had philosophy assumed

PLATO

81

so brilliant a garb; and surely never since. Even in transla-
tion this style shines and sparkles and leaps and bubbles over.
“Plato,” says one of his lovers, Shelley, “exhibits the rare
union of close and subtle logic with the Pythian enthusiasm
of poetry, melted by the splendor and harmony of his periods
into one irresistible stream of musical impressions, which hurry
the persuasions onward as in a breathless career.” 1 It was
not for nothing that the young philosopher had begun as a
dramatist.

The difficulty in understanding Plato lies precisely in this
intoxicating mixture of philosophy and poetry, of science and
art; we cannot always tell in which character of the dialogue
the author speaks, nor in which form; whether he is literal
or speaks in metaphor, whether he jests or is in earnest. His
love of jest and irony and myth leaves us at times baffled ; al-
most we could say of him that he did not teach except it. par-
ables. “Shall I, as an older person, speak to you, as younger
men, in apologue or myth?” asks his Protagoras . 2 These dia-
logues, we are told, were written by Plato for the general
reading public of his day : by their conversational method,
their lively war of pros and cons, and their gradual develop-
ment and frequent repetition of every important argument,
they were explicitly adapted (obscure though they may seem
to us now) to the understanding of the man who must taste
philosophy as an occasional luxury, and who is compelled by
the brevity of life to read as he who rims may read. There-
fore we must be prepared to find in these dialogues much that
is playful and metaphorical; much that is unintelligible ex-
cept to scholars learned in the social and literary minutiae of
Plato’s time ; much that today will seem irrelevant and fanci-
ful, but might well have served as the very sauce and flavor
by which a heavy dish of thought was made digestible for
minds unused to philosophic fare.

Let us confess, too, that Plato has in sufficient abundance

i Quoted by Barker, Greek Political Theory , London, 1918, p. 5.

t Protagoras, 320.

22

THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY

the qualities which he condemns. He inveighs against poets
and their myths, and proceeds to add one to the number of
poets and hundreds to the number of myths. He complains of
the priests (who go about preaching hell and offering re-
demption from it for a consideration— cf. The Republic, 3 64s),
but he himself is a priest, a theologian, a preacher, a super-
moralist, a Savonarola denouncing art and inviting vanities
to the fire. He acknowledges, Shakespeare-like, that “com-
parisons are slippery” ( Sophist , 231), but he slips out of one
into another and another and another ; he condemns the Soph-
ists as phrase-mongering disputants, but he himself is not
above chopping logic like a sophomore. Faguet parodies him:
“The whole is greater than the part? — Surely. — And the part
is less than the whole? — Yes. — : . . . Therefore, clearly, phi-
losophers should rule the state? — What is that? — It is evident;
let us go over it again.” 1

But this is the worst that we can say of him ; and after it is
said, the Dialogues remain one of the priceless treasures of the
world. 2 The best of them, The Republic, is a complete trea-
tise in itself, Plato reduced to a book ; here we shall find his
metaphysics, his theology, his ethics, his psychology, hifi
pedagogy, his politics, his theory of art. Here we shall find
problems reeking with modernity and contemporary savor',
communism and socialism, feminism and birth-control and
eugenics, Nietzschean problems of morality and aristocracy,
Rousseauian problems of return to nature and libertarian ed-
ucation, Bergsonian Sian vital and Freudian psychoanalysis
— everything is here. It is a feast for the elite, served by
an unstinting host. “Plato is philosophy, and philosophy
Plato,” says Emerson ; and awards to The Republic the word#

1 Pour qu’on Use Platon , Paris, 1905, p. 4.

2 The most important of the dialogues are: The Apology of Socrates^
Crito , Phcedo , The Symposium , Phadrus, Gorgias , Parmenides , and The
Statesman . The most important parts of The Republic (references are te
marginally-numbered sections, not to pages) are 327-32, 336-77, 384-5, 392*
426, 433-5, 441-76, 481-3, 512-20, 572-94. The best edition is Jowett’s; the
most convenient is in the Everyman series. References are to The RepubUo
unless otherwise stated.

PLATO 23

of Omar about the Koran: “Burn the libraries, for their value
is in this book.” 1

Let us study The Republic.

IV. THE ETHICAL PROBLEM

The discussion takes place in the house of Cephalus, a
wealthy aristocrat. In the group are Glaucon and Adeiman-
tus, brothers of Plato; and Thrasymachus, a gruff and ex-
citable Sophist. Socrates, who serves as the mouthpiece of
Plato in the dialogue, asks Cephalus :

“What do you consider to be the greatest blessing which
you have reaped from wealth?”

Cephalus answers that wealth is a blessing to him chiefly
because it enables him to be generous and honest and just.
«Socrates, after his sly fashion, asks him just what he means
oy justice; and therewith lets loose the dogs of philosophic
war. For nothing is so difficult as definition, nor anything so
severe a test and exercise of mental clarity and skill. Socrates
finds it a simple matter to destroy one after another the def-
initions offered him; until at. last Thrasymachus, less patient
than the rest, breaks out “with a roar” :

“What folly has possessed you, Socrates? And why do
you others all drop down at one another’s feet in this silly
way? I say that if you want to know what justice is, you
should answer and not ask, and shouldn’t pride yourself on
refuting others. . . . For there are many who can ask but
cannot answer” (336).

Socrates is not frightened; he continues to ask rather than
answer; and after a minute of parry and thrust he provokes
the unwary Thrasymachus to commit himself to a definition:

“Listen, then,” says the angry Sophist, “I proclaim that
might is right, and justice is the interest of the stronger.

. . „ The different forms of government make laws, demo-
cratic, aristocratic, or autocratic, with a view to their re-

l Representative Men, p. 41.

THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY

24

apective interests; and these laws, so made by them to serve
their interests, they deliver to their subjects as ‘justice/ and
punish as ‘unjust* anyone who transgresses them. ... I am
speaking of injustice on a large scale; and my meaning will
be most clearly seen in autocracy, which by fraud and force
takes away the property of others, not retail but wholesale.
Now when a man has taken away the money of the citizens t
and made slaves of them, then, instead of swindler and thief
he is called happy and blessed by all. For injustice is cen-
sured because those who censure it are afraid of suffering,
and not from any scruple they might have of doing injustice
themselves” (338-44).

This, of course, is the doctrine which our own day more or
less correctly associates with the name of Nietzsche. “Verily
I laughed many a time over the weaklings who thought them-
selves good because they had lame paws.” 1 Stirner expressed
*,he idea briefly when he said that “a handful of might is better
than a bagful of right.” Perhaps nowhere in the history of
philosophy is the doctrine better formulated than by Plato
himself in another dialogue, Gorgias , (483 f), where the Soph-
ist Callicles denounces morality as an invention of the weak to
neutralize the strength of the strong.

They distribute praise and censure with a view to their
own interests ; they say that dishonesty is shameful and un-
just* — meaning by dishonesty the desire to have more than
their neighbors; for knowing their own inferiority, they
would be only too glad to have equality. . . . But if there
were a man who had sufficient force (enter the Superman),
he would shake off and break through and escape from all
this ; he would trample under foot all our formulas and spells
and charms, and all our laws, that sin against nature. ...
He who would truly live ought to allow his desires to wax to
the uttermost ; but when they have grown to their greatest
he should have courage and intelligence to minister to them,
and to satisfy all his longings. And this I affirm to be natr
ural justice and nobility. But the many cannot do this;

^Thus Spake Zarathustra, New York, 1906, p. 166.

PLATO

m

and therefore they blame such persons, because they are
ashamed of their own inability, which they desire to conceal ;
and hence they call intemperance base. . . , They enslave
the nobler natures, and they praise justice only because they
are cowards.

This justice is a morality not for men but for foot-men
(i oude gar andros alV andrapodou tinos) ; it is a slave-morality,
not a hero-morality; the real virtues of a man are courage
( andreia ) and intelligence (.phronesis) - 1
Perhaps this hard “immoralism” reflects the development
of imperialism in the foreign policy of Athens, and its ruthless
treatment of weaker states . 2 “Your empire,” said Pericles in
the oration which Thucydides invents for him, “is based oil
your own strength rather than the good will of your subjects.”
And the same historian reports the Athenian envoys coercing
Melos into joining Athens in the war against Sparta: “You
know as well as we do that right, as the world goes, is only in
question for equals in power; the strong do what they can,
and the weak suffer what they must.” 3 We have here the
fundamental problem of ethics, the crux of the theory of moral
conduct. What is justice? — shall we seek righteousness, or
shall we seek power? — is it better to be good, or to be strong?

How does Socrates — i. e., Plato — meet the challenge of this
theory ? At first he does not meet it at all. He points out
that justice is a relation among individuals, depending on social
organization ; and that in consequence it can be studied better
as part of the structure of a community than as a quality of
personal conduct. If, he suggests, we can picture a just
state, we shall be in a better position to describe a just in-
dividual. Plato excuses himself for this digression on the
score that in testing a man’s vision we make him read first
large type, then smaller; so, he argues, it is easier to analyze
justice on a large scale than on the small scale of individual

1 Gorgias 491 ; cf. Machiavelli’s definition of virtii as intellect plus force.

2 Barker, p. 73.

$ History of the Peloponnesian War, v. 105. >

26

THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY

behavior. But we need not be deceived: in truth the Master
is patching two books together, and uses the argument as a
seam. He wishes not only to discuss the problems of personal
morality, but the problems of social and political reconstruc-
tion as well. He has a Utopia up his sleeve, and is resolved to
produce it. It is easy to forgive him, for the digression forms
the core and value of his book.

V. THE POLITICAL PROBLEM

Justice would be a simple matter, says Plato, if men were
simple ; an anarchist communism would suffice. For a moment
he gives his imagination reign:

First, then, let us consider what will be their way of life.

• . . Will they not produce corn, and wine, and clothes, and
shoes, and build houses for themselves? And when they are
housed they will work in summer commonly stripped and
barefoot, but in winter substantially clothed and shod.
They will feed on barley and wheat, baking the wheat and
kneading the flour, making noble puddings and loaves ; these
they will serve up on a mat of reed or clean leaves, them-
selves reclining the while upon beds of yew or myrtle boughs.
And they and their children will feast, drinking of the wine
which they have made, wearing garlands on their heads, and
having the praises of the gods on their lips, living in sweet
society, and having a care that their families do not exceed
their means ; for they will have an eye to poverty or war.

• • . Of course they will have a relish — salt, and olives, and
cheese, and onions, and cabbages or other country herbs
which are fit for boiling; and we shall give them a dessert of
figs, and pulse, and beans, and myrtle-berries, and beech-
nuts, which they will roast at the fire, drinking in modera-
tion. And with such a diet they may be expected to live in
peace to a good old age, and bequeath a similar life to their
children after them (372).

Observe here the passing reference to the control of popu-
lation (by infanticide, presumably) , to vegetarianism, and to

PLATO

n

A “return to nature,” to the primitive simplicity which Hebrew
legend pictures in the Garden of Eden. The whole has the
sound of Diogenes the “Cynic,” who, as the epithet implied,
thought we should “turn and live with the animals, they are
so placid and self-contained” ; and for a moment we are likely
to classify Plato with St. Simon and Fourier and William
Morris and Tolstoi. But he is a little more sceptical than
these men of kindly faith ; he passes quietly on to the question,
Why is it that such a simple paradise as he has described never
comes? — why is it that these Utopias never arrive upon the
map?

He answers, because of greed and luxury. Men are not
content with a simple life: they are acquisitive, ambitious,
competitive, and jealous; they soon tire of what they have,
and pine for what they have not ; and they seldom desire any-
thing unless it belongs to others. The result is the encroach-
ment of one group upon the territory of another, the rivalry
of groups for the resources of the soil, and then war. Trade
and finance develop, and bring new class-divisions. “Any
ordinary city is in fact two cities, one the city of the poor, the
other of the rich, each at war with the other; and in either
division there are smaller ones — you would make a great
mistake if you treated them as single states” (423). A mer-
cantile bourgeoisie arises, whose members seek social position
through wealth and conspicuous consumption : “they will
spend large sums of money on their wives” (548). These
changes in the distribution of wealth produce political
changes: as the wealth of the merchant over-reaches that of
the land-owner, aristocracy gives way to a plutocratic oligar-
chy — wealthy traders and bankers rule the state. Then states-
manship, which is the coordination of social forces and the ad-
justment of policy to growth, is replaced by politics, which
is the strategy of party and the lust for the spoils of office.

Every form of government tends to perish by excess of its
basic principle. Aristocracy ruins itself by limiting too nar-
rowly the circle within which power is confined; oligarchy

THE STORY OP PHILOSOPHY

$8

ruins itself by the incautious scramble for immediate wealth*
In either case the end is revolution. When revolution comes
it may seem to arise from little causes and petty whims; but
though it may spring from slight occasions it is the precipitate
result of grave and accumulated wrongs; when a body is
weakened by neglected ills, the merest exposure may bring
serious disease (556). “Then democracy comes: the poor
overcome their opponents, slaughtering some and banishing
the rest ; and give to the people an equal share of freedom and
power” (557).

But even democracy ruins itself by excess — of democracy.
Its basic principle is the equal right of all to hold office and
determine public policy. This is at first glance a delightful
arrangement; it becomes disastrous because the people are
not properly equipped by education to select the best rulers
and the wisest courses (688). “As to the people they have
no understanding, and only repeat what their rulers are
pleased to tell them” ( Protagoras , 317) ; to get a doctrine ac-
cepted or rejected it is only necessary to have it praised or
ridiculed in a popular play (a hit, no doubt, at Aristophanes,
whose comedies attacked almost every new idea). Mob-rule
is a rough sea for the ship of state to ride; every wind of
oratory stirs up the waters and deflects the course. The up-
shot of such a democracy is tyranny or autocracy ; the crowd
to loves flattery, it is so “hungry for honey,” that at last the
Wiliest and most unscrupulous flatterer, calling himself the
“protector of the people” rises to supreme power (565).
(Consider the history of Rome.)

The more Plato thinks of it, the more astounded he is at
the folly of leaving to mob caprice and gullibility the selec-
tion of political officials — not to speak of leaving it to those
shady and wealth-serving strategists who pull the oligarchic
wires behind the democratic stage. Plato complains that
whereas in simpler matters — like shoe-making — we think only
a specially-trained person will serve our purpose, in politics

PLATO

29

we presume that every one who knows how to get votes knows
how to administer a city or a state. When we are ill we call
for a trained physician, whose degree is a guarantee of specific
preparation and technical competence — we do not ask for the
handsomest physician, or the most eloquent one; well then,
when the whole state is ill should we not look for the service
and guidance of the wisest and the best? To devise a method
of barring incompetence and knavery from public office, and
of selecting and preparing the best to rule for the common
good — that is the problem of political philosophy.

VI. THE PSYCHOLOGICAL PROBLEM

But behind these political problems lies the nature of man ;
to understand politics, we must, unfortunately, understand
psychology. “Like man, like state” (575) ; “governments
vary as the characters of men vary ; . . , states are made out
of the human natures which are in them” (544) ; the state is
what it is because its citizens are what they are. Therefore
we need not expect to have better states until we have better
men; till then all changes will leave every essential thing
unchanged. “How charming people are! — always doctoring,
increasing and complicating their disorders, fancying they will
be cured by some nostrum which somebody advises them to
try, never getting better, but always growing worse. . . .
Are they not as good as a play, trying their hand at legisla-
tion, and imagining that by reforms they will make an end
to the dishonesties and rascalities of mankind — not knowing
that in reality they are cutting away at the heads of a
hydra?” (4<25).

Let us examine for a moment the human material with which
political philosophy must deal.

Human behavior, says Plato, flows from three main sources;
desire, emotion, and knowledge. Desire, appetite, impulse,
instinct — these are one; emotion, spirit, ambition, courage — •

THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY

these are one ; knowledge, thought, intellect, reason — these are
one. Desire has its seat in the loins ; it is a bursting reservoir
of energy, fundamentally sexual. Emotion has its seat in
the heart, in the flow and force of the blood; it is the organic
resonance of experience and desire. Knowledge has its seat
in the head; it is the eye of desire, and can become the pilot
of the soul.

These powers and qualities are all in all men, but in divers
degrees. Some men are but the embodiment of desire; rest-
less and acquisitive souls, who are absorbed in material quests
and quarrels, who burn with lust of luxuries and show, and
who rate their gains always as naught compared with their
ever-receding goals: these are the men who dominate and
manipulate industry. But there are others who are temples
of feeling and courage, who care not so much what they
fight for, as for victory “in and for itself”; they are pug-
nacious rather than acquisitive ; their pride is in power rather
than in possession, their joy is on the battle-field rather
than in the mart : these are the men who make the armies and
navies of the world. And last are the few whose delight is in
meditation and understanding; who yearn not for goods, nor
for victory, but for knowledge; who leave both market and
battle-field to lose themselves in the quiet clarity of secluded
thought; whose will is a light rather than a fire, whose haven
is not power but truth: these are the men of wisdom, who stand
aside unused by the world.

Now just as effective individual action implies that desire,
though warmed with emotion, is guided by knowledge; so in
the perfect state the industrial forces would produce but they
would not rule; the military forces would protect but they
would not rule; the forces of knowledge and science and phi-,
losophy would be nourished and protected, and they would
rule. Unguided by knowledge, the people are a multitude
without order, like desires in disarray; the people need the
guidance of philosophers as desires need the enlightenment of
knowledge. “Ruin, comes when the trader, whose heart is<

PLATO

lifted up by wealth, becomes ruler” (434) ; or when the general
uses his army to establish a military dictatorship. The pro-
ducer is at his best in the economic field, the warrior is at his
best in battle ; they are both at their worst in public office ; and
in their crude hands politics submerges statesmanship. For
statesmanship is a science and an art ; one must have lived for
it and been long prepared. Only a philosopher-king is fit
to guide a nation. “Until philosophers are kings, or the
kings and princes of this world have the spirit and power of
philosophy, and wisdom and political leadership meet in the
same man, . . . cities will never cease from ill, nor the
human race” (473).

This is the key-stone of the arch of Plato’s thought.

vn. THE PSYCHOLOGICAL SOLUTION

Well, then, what is to be done?

We must begin by “sending out into the country all the
inhabitants of the city who are more than ten years old, and
by taking possession of the children, who will thus be pro-
tected from the habits of their parents” (540). We cannot
build Utopia with young people corrupted at every turn by
the example of their elders. We must start, so far as we can,
with a clean slate. It is quite possible that some enlightened
ruler will empower us to make such a beginning with some
part or colony of his realm. (One ruler did, as we shall see.)
In any case we must give to every child, and from the outset,
full equality of educational opportunity; there is no telling
where the light of talent or genius will break out; we must
seek it impartially everywhere, in every rank and race. The
first turn on our road is universal education.

For the first ten years of life, education shall be pre-
dominantly physical ; every school is to have a gymnasium and
a playground; play and sport are to be the entire curriculum;
and in this first decade such health will be stored up as will
make all medicine unnecessary. “To require the help '

32

THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY

medicine because by lives of indolence and luxury men have
filled themselves like pools with waters and winds, . . .
flatulence and catarrh — is not this a disgrace? . . . Our
present system of medicine may be said to educate diseases/’
to draw them out into a long existence, rather than to cure
them. But this is an absurdity of the idle rich. “When a
carpenter is ill he asks the physician for a rough and ready
remedy— an "emetic, or a purge, or cautery, or the knife.
And if anyone tells him that he must go through a course of
dietetics, and swathe and swaddle his head, and all that sort
of thing, he replies at once that he has no time to be ill, and
that he sees no good in a life that is spent in nursing his dis-
ease to the neglect of his ordinary calling ; and therefore, say-
ing good-bye to this sort of physicians, he resumes his cus-
tomary diet, and either gets well and lives and does his busi-
ness, or, if his constitution fails, he dies and has done with it”
(405-6). We cannot afford to have a nation of malingerers
and invalids ; Utopia must begin in the body of man.

But mere athletics and gymnastics would make a man too
one-sided. “How shall we find a gentle nature which has also
great courage? — for they seem to be inconsistent with each
other” (375). We do not want a nation of prize-fighters
and weight-lifters. Perhaps music will solve our problem:
through music the soul learns harmony and rhythm, and even
a disposition to justice; for “can he who is harmoniously con-
stituted ever be unjust? Is not this, Glaucon, why musical
training is so powerful, because rhythm and harmony find
their way into the secret places of the soul, bearing grace in
their movements and making the soul graceful?” (401 ;
Protagoras, 326). Music moulds character, and therefore
shares in determining social and political issues. “Damon
tells me — and I can quite believe it — that when modes of music
change, the fundamental laws of the state change with them.” 1

Music is valuable not only because it brings refinement of

i Cf. Daniel O’Connell: “Let me write the songs of a nation, and I care
not who makes its laws.”

PLATO

feeling and character, but also because it preserves and re-
stores health. There are some diseases which can be treated
only through the mind ( Charmides , 157) : so the Corybantic
priest treated hysterical women with wild pipe music, which
excited them to dance and dance till they fell to the ground
exhausted, and went to . sleep ; when they awoke they were
cured. The unconscious sources of human thought are
touched and soothed by such methods ; and ft is in these
substrata of behavior and feeling that genius sinks its roots.
“No man when conscious attains to true or inspired intuition,
but rather when the power of intellect is fettered in sleep or
by disease or dementia” ; the prophet ( mantike ) or genius is
akin to the madman ( manike ) ( Phcedrus , 244).

Plato passes on to a remarkable anticipation of “psycho-
analysis.” Our political psychology is perplexed, he argues,
because we have not adequately studied the various appetites
or instincts of man. Dreams may give us a clue to some of
the subtle and more elusive of these dispositions.

Certain of the unnecessary pleasures and instincts are
deemed to be unlawful ; every man appears to have them, but
in some persons they are subjected to the control of law and
reason [“sublimated”], and the better desires prevailing
over them, they are either wholly suppressed, or reduced in
strength and number; while in other persons these desires
are stronger and more abundant. I mean particularly those
desires which are awake when the reasoning and taming and
ruling power [“censor”] of the personality is asleep; the
wild beast in our nature, gorged with meat and drink, starts
up and walks about naked, and surfeits at his will ; and there
is no conceivable folly or crime, however shameless or un-
natural — not excepting incest or parricide [“(Edipus com-
plex”] — of which such a nature may not be guilty. . . .
But when a man’s pulse is healthy and temperate, and he
goes to sleep cool and rational, . . . having indulged his
appetites neither too much nor too little, but just enough to
lay them to sleep, ... he is then least likely to be the sport
of fanciful and lawless visions. ... In all of us, even in

84 )

THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY

good men, there is such a latent wild beast nature, which
peers out in sleep (571-2).

Music and measure lend grace and health to the soul
and to the body; but again, too much music is as dangerous
as too much athletics. To be merely an athlete is to be nearly
a savage; and to be merely a musician is to be “melted and
softened beyond what is good” (410). The two must be com-
bined; and after sixteen the individual practice of music
must be abandoned, though choral singing, like communal
games, will go on throughout life. Nor is music to be merely
music; it must be used to provide attractive forms for the
sometimes unappetizing contents of mathematics, history and
science; there is no reason why for the young these difficult
studies should not be smoothed into verse and beautified with
song. Even then these studies are not to be forced upon an
unwilling mind; within limits a libertarian spirit must prevail

The elements of instruction . . . should be presented to
the mind in childhood, but not with any compulsion; for a
freeman should be a freeman too in the acquisition of knowl-
edge. . . . Knowledge which is acquired under compulsion
has no hold on the mind. Therefore do not use compulsion,
but let early education be rather a sort of amusement; this
will better enable you to find out the natural bent of the child
(536).

With minds so freely growing, and bodies made strong by
sport and outdoor life of every kind, our ideal state would have
a firm psychological and physiological base broad enough for
every possibility and every development. But a moral basis
must be provided as well ; the members of the community must
make a unity; they must learn that they are members of one
another; that they owe to one another certain amenities and
obligations. Now since men are by nature acquisitive, jealous,
combative, and erotic, how shall we persuade them to behave
themselves? By the policeman’s omnipresent club? It is a
brutal method, costly and irritating. There is a better way,

PLATO

35

and that is by lending to the moral requirements of the com-
munity the sanction of supernatural authority. We must
have a religion.

Plato believes that a nation cannot be strong unless it be-
lieves in God. A mere cosmic force, or first cause, or elan
vital , that was not a person, could hardly inspire hope, or
devotion, or sacrifice; it could not offer comfort to the hearts
of the distressed, nor courage to embattled souls. But a liv-
ing God can do all this, and can stir or frighten the self-
seeking individualist into some moderation of his greed, some
control of his passion. All the more so if to belief in God
is added belief in personal immortality: the hope of another
life gives us courage to meet our own death, and to bear with
the death of our loved ones ; we are twice armed if we fight
with faith. Granted that none of the beliefs can be demon-
strated ; that God may be after all only the personified ideal
of our love and our hope, and that the soul is like the music
of the lyre, and dies with the instrument that gave it form:
yet surely (so runs the argument, Pascal-like, of the Phaedo)
it will do us no harm to believe, and it may do us and our chil-
dren immeasurable good.

For we are likely to have trouble with these children of ours
if we undertake to explain and justify everything to their
simple minds. We shall have an especially hard time when
they arrive at the age of twenty, and face the first scrutiny
and test of what they have learned in all their years of equal
education. Then will come a ruthless weeding out ; the Great
Elimination, we might call it. That test will be no mere
academic examination; it will be practical as well as theo-
retical: “there shall also be toils and pains and conflicts pre-
scribed for them” (413). Every kind of ability will have a
chance to show itself, and every sort of stupidity will be
hunted out into the light. Those who fail will be assigned
to the economic work of the nation; they will be business
men, and clerks, and factory workers, and farmers. The
te«=t will be impartial and impersonal; whether one is to be a

86

THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY

farmer or a philosopher will be determined not by monopolized
opportunity or nepotic favoritism ; the selection will be more
democratic than democracy.

Those who pass this first test will receive ten more years
of education and training, in body and mind and character.
And then they will face a second test, far severer than the
first. Those who fail will become the auxiliaries, or execu-
tive aides and military officers of the state. Now it is
just in these great eliminations that we shall need every
resource of persuasion to get the eliminated to accept their
fate with urbanity and peace. For what is to prevent that
great unselected majority, in the first test, and that lesser
but more vigorous and capable second group of Eliminees,
from shouldering arms and smashing this Utopia of ours into
a mouldering reminiscence? What is to prevent them from
establishing there and then a world in which again mere
number or mere force will rule, and the sickly comedy of a
sham democracy will reenact itself da capo ad nauseam ?
Then religion and faith will be our only salvation: we shall
tell these young people that the divisions into which they have
fallen are God-decreed and irrevocable — not all their tears
shall wipe out one word of it. We shall tell them the myth
of the metals:

“Citizens, you are brothers, yet God has framed you dif-
ferently. Some of you have the power of command; and
these he has made of gold, wherefore they have the greatest
honor ; others of silver, to be auxiliaries ; others again, who
are to be husbandmen and craftsmen, he has made of brass
and iron; and the species will generally be preserved in the
children. But as you are of the same original family, a
golden parent will sometimes have a silver son, or a silver
parent a golden son. And God proclaims . . . that if the
son of a golden or a silver parent has an admixture of brass
or iron, then nature requires a transposition of ranks ; and
the eye of the ruler must not be pitiful towards his child be-
cause he has to descend in the scale to become a husbandman

PLATO

37

or an artisan, just as there may be others sprung from the
artisan class who are raised to honor, and become guardians
and auxiliaries. For an oracle says that when a man of
brass or iron guards the state, it will be destroyed” (415).

Perhaps with this “royal fable” we shall secure a fairly
general consent to the furtherance of our plan.

But now what of the lucky remnant that ride these succes-
sive waves of selection?

They are taught philosophy. They have now reached the
age of thirty; it would not have been wise to let them “taste
the dear delight too early; . . . for young men, when they
first get the taste of philosophy in their mouths, argue for
amusement, and are always contradicting and refuting, . . .
like puppy-dogs who delight to tear and pull at all who come
near them” (539). This dear delight, philosophy, means two
things chiefly: to think clearly, which is metaphysics; and to
rule wisely, which is politics. First then, our young Elite
must learn to think clearly. For that purpose they shall
study the doctrine of Ideas.

But this famous doctrine of Ideas, embellished and ob-
scured by the fancy and poetry of Plato, is a discouraging
maze to the modern student, and must have offered another
severe test to the survivors of many siftings. The Idea of a
thing might be the “general idea” of the class to which it
belongs (the Idea of John, or Dick, or Harry, is Man) ; or
it might be the law or laws according to which the thing
operates (the Idea of John would be the reduction of all his
behavior to “natural laws”) ; or it might be the perfect pur-
pose and ideal towards which the thing and its class may
develop (the Idea of John is the John of Utopia). Very
probably the Idea is all of these — idea, law and ideal. Be-
hind the surface phenomena and particulars which greet our
senses, are generalizations, regularities, and directions of
development, unperceived by sensation but conceived by
reason and thought. These ideas, laws and ideals are more
permanent — and therefore more “real” — than the sense-

38

THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY

perceived particular things through which we conceive and
deduce them: Man is more permanent than Tom, or Dick, or
Harry ; this circle is born with the movement of my pencil
and dies under the attrition of my eraser, but the conception
Circle goes on forever. This tree stands, and that tree falls;
but the laws which determine what bodies shall fall, and when,
and how, were without beginning, are now, and ever shall be,
without end. There is, as the gentle Spinoza would say, a
world of things perceived by sense, and a world of laws in-
ferred by thought; we do not see the law of inverse squares
but it is there, and everywhere ; it was before anything began,
and will survive when all the world of things is a finished tale.
Here is a bridge: the sense perceives concrete and iron to a
hundred million tons; but the mathematician sees, with the
mind’s eye, the daring and delicate adjustment of all this mass
of material to the laws of mechanics and mathematics and en-
gineering, those laws according to which all good bridges that
are made must be made; if the mathematician be also a poet,
he will see these laws upholding the bridge; if the laws were
violated the bridge would collapse into the stream beneath;
the laws are the God that holds up the bridge in the hollow
of his hand. Aristotle hints something of this when he says
that by Ideas Plato meant what Pythagoras meant by “num-
ber” when he taught that this is a world of numbers (meaning
presumably that the world is ruled by mathematical con-
stancies and regularities). Plutarch tells us that according
to Plato “God always geometrizes” ; or, as Spinoza puts the
same thought, God and the universal laws of structure and
operation are one and the same reality. To Plato, as to
Bertrand Russell, mathematics is therefore the indispensable
prelude to philosophy, and its highest form; over the doors
of his Academy Plato placed, Dantesquely, these words, “Let
no man ignorant of geometry enter here.” 1

i The details of the argument for the interpretation here given of the doc-
trine of Ideas may be followed in D. G. Ritchie’s Plato , Edinburgh, 1902, es-
pecially pp. 49 and 85.

PLATO

39

Without these Ideas — these generalizations, regularities
and ideals — the world would be to us as it must seem to the
first-opened eyes of the child, a mass of unclassified and un-
meaning particulars of sensation; for meaning can be given
to things only by classifying and generalizing them, by find-
ing the laws of their beings, and the purposes and goals of
their activity. Or the world without Ideas would be a heap
of book-titles fallen haphazard out of the catalogue, as com-
pared to the same titles arranged in order according to their
classes, their sequences and their purposes; it would be the
shadows in a cave as compared with the sunlit realities without,
which cast those fantastic and deceptive shadows within (514).
Therefore the essence of a higher education is the search for
Ideas: for generalizations, laws of sequence, and ideals of
development ; behind things we must discover their relation and
meaning, their mode and law of operation, the function and
ideal they serve or adumbrate; we must classify and co-
ordinate our sense experience in terms of law and purpose;
only for lack of this does the mind of the imbecile differ from
the mind of Caesar.

Well, after five years of training in this recondite doctrine
of Ideas, this art of perceiving significant forms and
causal sequences and ideal potentialities amid the welter and
hazard of sensation; after five years of training in the appli-
cation of this principle to the behavior of men and the con-
duct of states; after this long preparation from childhood
through youth and into the maturity of thirty-five; surely
now these perfect products are ready to assume the roy£?
purple and the highest functions of public life? — surely they
are at last the philosopher-kings who are to rule and to free
the human race?

Alas! not yet. Their education is still unfinished. Fot
after all it has been, in the main, a theoretical education;
something else is heeded. Let these Ph.D.’s pass down now
from the heights of philosophy into the “cave” of the world
tff men and things ; generalizations and abstractions are worth*

40

THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY

less except they be tested by this concrete world; let our
students enter that world with no favor shown them; they
shall compete with men of business, with hard-headed grasping
individualists, with men of brawn and men of cunning ; in this
mart of strife they shall learn from the book of life itself ;
they shall hurt their fingers and scratch their philosophic
shins on the crude realities of the world; they shall earn their
bread and butter by the sweat of their high brows. And
this last and sharpest test shall go on ruthlessly for fifteen long
years. Some of our perfect products will break under the
pressure, and be submerged by this last great wave of elimina-
tion. Those that survive, scarred and fifty, sobered and self-
reliant, shorn of scholastic vanity by the merciless friction of
life, and armed now with all the wisdom that tradition and
experience, culture and conflict, can cooperate to give — these
men at last shall automatically become the rulers of the state.

vm. THE POLITICAL SOLUTION

Automatically — without any hypocrisy of voting. De-
mocracy means perfect equality of opportunity, especially in
education; not the rotation of every Tom, Dick and Harry
in public office. Every man shall have an equal chance to
make himself fit for the complex tasks of administration; but
only those who have proved their mettle (or, in our myth,
their metal) , and have emerged from all tests with the
insignia of skill, shall be eligible to rule. Public officials shall
be chosen not by votes, nor by secret cliques pulling the unseen
wires of democratic pretense, but by their own ability as
demonstrated in the fundamental democracy of an equal race.
Nor shall any man hold office without specific training, nor
hold high office till he has first filled a lower office well
( Gorgias , 514-5).

Is this aristocracy? Well, we need not be afraid of the
word, if the reality is good which it betokens : words are wise
men’s counters, without value of their own ; they are the money

PLATO

41

only of fools and politicians. We want to be ruled by the
best, which is what aristocracy means ; have we not, Carlyle-
like, yearned and prayed to be ruled by the best? But we
have come to think of aristocracies as hereditary: let it be
carefully noted that this Platonic aristocracy is not of that
kind; one would rather call it a democratic aristocracy. For
the people, instead of blindly electing the lesser of two evils
presented to them as candidates by nominating cliques, will
here be themselves, every one of them, the candidates; and will
receive an equal chance of educational election to public
office. There is no caste here ; no inheritance of position or
privilege ; no stoppage of talent impecuniously born ; the son
of a ruler begins on the same level, and receives the same
treatment and opportunity, as the son of a boot-black; if the
ruler’s son is a dolt he falls at the first shearing ; if the boot^
black’s son is a man of ability the way is clear for him to
become a guardian of the state (423). Career will be open
to talent wherever it is born. This is a democracy of the
schools — a hundredfold more honest and more effective than a
democracy of the polls.

And so, “setting aside every other business, the guardians
will dedicate themselves wholly to the maintenance of free-
dom in the state, making this their craft and engaging in no
work which does not bear upon this end” (395). They shall
be legislature and executive and court in one; even the laws
shall not bind them to a dogma in the face of altered cir-
cumstance; the rule of the guardians shall be a flexible in-
telligence unbound by precedent.

But how can men of fifty have a flexible intelligence?
Will they not be mentally plaster-casted by routine?
Adeimantus (echoing, no doubt, some hot brotherly debate in
Plato’s home) objects that philosophers are dolts or rogues,^
who would rule either foolishly, or selfishly, or both. “The
votaries of philosophy who carry on the study not only in
youth with a view to education, but as the pursuit of their
maturer years- — these men for the most part grow into very

THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY

strange beings, not to say utter scoundrels; and the result
with those who may be considered the best of them is, that
they are made useless to the world by the very study which
you extol” (487). This is a fair enough description of some
be-spectacled modern philosophers ; but Plato answers that he
has guarded against this difficulty by giving his philosophers
the training of life as well as the erudition of the schools;
that they will in consequence be men of action rather than
merely men of thought — men seasoned to high purposes and
noble temper by long experience and trial. By philosophy
Plato means an active culture, wisdom that mixes with the
concrete busy-ness of life; he does not mean a closeted and
impractical metaphysician ; Plato “is the man who least
resembles Kant, which is (with all respect) a considerable
merit.” 1

So much for incompetence ; as for rascality we may provide
against that by establishing among the guardians a system
of communism :

In the first place none of them should have any property
beyond what is absolutely necessary; neither should they
have a private house, with bars and bolts, closed against any
one who has a mind to enter; their provisions should be only
such as are required by trained warriors, who are men of
temperance and courage; their agreement is to receive from
the citizens a fixed rate of pay, enough to meet the expenses
of the year, and no more; and they will have common meals
and live together, like soldiers in a camp. Gold and silver
we will tell them that they have from God ; the diviner metal
is within them, and they have therefore no need of that
earthly dross which passes under the name of gold, and ought
not to pollute the divine by earthly admixture, for that com-
moner metal has been the source of many unholy deeds ; but
their own is undefiled. And they alone of all the citizens
may not touch or handle silver or gold, or be under the same
roof with them, or wear them, or drink from them. And this
will be their salvation, and the salvation of the State. But
lFaguet, p. 10.

PLATO

43

should they ever acquire homes or lands or moneys of their
own, they will become housekeepers and husbandmen instead
of guardians; enemies and tyrants instead of allies of the
other citizens; hating and being hated, plotting and being
plotted against, they will pass through life in much greater
terror of internal than of external enemies ; and the hour of
ruin, both to themselves and to the rest of the State, will be at
hand (416-17).

This arrangement will make it unprofitable, as well as dan-
gerous, for the guardians to rule as a clique seeking the good
of their class rather than that of the community as a whole.
For they will be protected from want; the necessities and
modest luxuries of a noble life will be theirs in regular provi-
sion, without the searing and wrinkling care of economic
worry. But by the same token they will be precluded from
cupidity and sordid ambitions; they will always have just so
much of the world’s goods, and no more; they will be like
physicians establishing, and themselves accepting, a dietary
for a nation. They will eat together, like consecrated men;
they will sleep together in single barracks, like soldiers sworn
to simplicity. “Friends should have all things in common,
as Pythagoras used to say ( Laws 807). So the authority
of the guardians will be sterilized, and their power made
poisonless; their sole reward will be honor and the sense of
service to the group. And they will be such men as from the
beginning have deliberately consented to so materially limited
a career; and such men as at the end of their stern training
will have learned to value the high repute of the statesman
above the crass emoluments of the office-seeking politicians or
the “economic man.” At their coming the battles of party
politics will be no more.

But what will their wives say to all this? Will they be
content to forego the luxuries of life and the conspicuous
consumption of goods? The guardians w r ill have no wives.
Their communism is to be of women as well as of goods.
They are to be freed not only from the egoism of self, but

44

THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY

from the egoism of family; they are not to be narrowed tat
the anxious acquisitiveness of the prodded husband; they are
to be devoted not to a woman but to the community. Even
their children shall not be specifically or distinguishably
theirs; all children of guardians shall be taken from their
mothers at birth and brought up in common ; their particular
parentage will be lost in the scuffle (460). All the guardian-
mothers will care for all the guardian-children; the brother-
hood of man, within these limits, will graduate from phrase
I to fact; every boy will be a brother to every other boy, every
girl a sister, every man a father, and every woman a mother.

But whence will these women come? Some, no doubt, the
guardians will woo out of the industrial or military classes;
others will have become, by their own right, members of the
guardian class. For there is to be no sex barrier of an y kind
in this community; least of all in education — the girl shall
have the same intellectual opportunities as the boy, the same
chance to rise to the highest positions in the state. When
Glaucon objects (453 f) that this admission of woman to any
office, provided she has passed the tests, violates the principle
of the division of labor, he receives the sharp reply that divi-
sion of labor must be by aptitude and ability, not by sex ; if a
woman shows herself capable of political administration, let her
rule; if a man shows himself to be capable only of washing
dishes, let him fulfil the function to which Providence has as-
signed him.

Community of wives does not mean indiscriminate mating;
rather there is to be strict eugenic supervision of all repro-
ductive relations. The argument from the breeding of
animals here starts its wandering career: if we get such good
results in breeding cattle selectively for qualities desired,
and from breeding only from the best in each generation,
why should we not apply similar principles to the matings
of mankind? (459). For it is not enough to educate the
child properly; he must be properly born, of select and healthy
ancestry; “education should begin before birth” (Laws, 789).

PLATO

45

Therefore no man or woman shall procreate unless in perfect
health; a health certificate is to be required of every bride
and groom (Laws, 772). Men may reproduce only when
they are above thirty and under forty-five ; women only when
they are above twenty and under forty. Men unmarried by
thirty-five are to be taxed into felicity (Laws, 771). Off-
spring born of unlicensed matings, or deformed, are to be
exposed and left to die. Before and after the ages specified
for procreation, mating is to be free, on condition that the
foetus be aborted. “We grant this permission with strict or-
ders to the parties to do all in their power to prevent any
embryo from seeing the light ; and if any should force its way
to birth, they must understand that the offspring of such a
union cannot be maintained, and they must make their ar-
rangements accordingly” (461). The marriage of relatives
is prohibited, as inducing degeneration (310). “The best of
either sex should be united with the best as often as possible,
and the inferior with the inferior ; and they are to rear the off-
spring of the one sort but not that of the other; for this is
the only way of keeping the flock in prime condition. . . . Our
braver and better youth, beside their other honors and rewards,
are to be permitted a greater variety of mates ; for such fathers
ought to have as many sons as possible” (459-60).

But our eugenic society must be protected not only from
disease and deterioration within, but from enemies without.
It must be ready, if need be, to wage successful war. Our
model community would of course be pacific, for it would
restrict population within the means of subsistence ; but
neighboring states not so managed might well look upon the
orderly prosperity of our Utopia as an invitation to raid and
rapine. Hence, while deploring the necessity, we shall have,
in our intermediate class, a sufficient number of well-trained
soldiers, living a hard and simple life like the guardians, on
& stated modicum of goods supplied by their “maintainers
And fore-fathers,” the people. At the same time every pre«
caution must be taken to avoid the occasions of war. The

46

THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY

primary occasion is overpopulation (373) ; the second is
foreign trade, with the inevitable disputes that interrupt it.
Indeed, competitive trade is really a form of war; “peace is
only a name” ( Laws , 622). It will be well then to situate
our ideal state considerably inland, so that it shall be shut
out from any high development of foreign commerce. “The
Bea fills a country with merchandise and money-making and
bargaining ; it breeds in men’s minds habits of financial greed
and faithlessness, alike in its internal and in its foreign rela-
tions” (Laws, 704—7). Foreign trade requires a large navy to
protect it; and navalism is as bad as militarism. “In every
case the guilt of war is confined to a few persons, and the many
are friends” (471). The most frequent wars are precisely
the vilest — civil wars, wars of Greek against Greek; let the
Greeks form a pan-Hellenic league of nations, uniting lest
“the whole Greek race some day fall under the yoke of bar-
barian peoples” (469).

So our political structure will be topped with a small class
of guardians ; it will be protected by a large class of soldiers
and “auxiliaries”; and it will rest on the broad base of a
commercial, industrial, and agricultural population. This
last or economic class will retain private property, private
mates, and private families. But trade and industry will be
regulated by the guardians to prevent excessive individual
wealth or poverty; any one acquiring more than four times
the average possession of the citizens must relinquish the
excess to the state (Laws, 714 f ) . Perhaps interest will be
forbidden, and profits limited (Laws, 920) . The communism
of the guardians is impracticable for the economic class;
the distinguishing characteristics of this class are powerful
instincts of acquisition and competition; some noble souls
among them will be free from this fever of combative pos-
session, but the majority of men are consumed with it; they
hunger and thirst not after righteousness, nor after honor, but
after possessions endlessly multiplied. Now men engrossed
in the pursuit of money are unfit to rule a state; and our

PLATO

47

entire plan rests on the hope that if the guardians rule well
and live simply, the economic man will be willing to let them
monopolize administration if they permit him to monopolize
luxury. In short, the perfect society would be that in which
each class and each unit would be doing the work to which
its nature and aptitude best adapted it; in which no class
or individual would interfere with others, but all would co-
operate in difference to produce an efficient and harmonious
whole (433-4). That would be a just state.

IX. THE ETHICAL SOLUTION

And now our political digression is ended, and we are ready
at last to answer the question with which we began — What
is justice? There are only three things worth while in this
world — justice, beauty and truth; and perhaps none of them
can be defined. Four hundred years after Plato a Roman
procurator of Judea asked, helplessly, “What is truth?” — and
philosophers have not yet answered, nor told us what is beauty.
But for justice Plato ventures a definition. “Justice,” he
says, “is the having and doing what is one’s own” (433).

This has a disappointing sound; after so much delay we
expected an infallible revelation. What does the definition
mean? Simply that each man shall receive the equivalent
of what he produces, and shall perform the function for which
he is best fit. A just man is a man in just the right place,
doing his best, and giving the full equivalent of what he re-
ceives. A society of just men would be therefore a highly
harmonious and efficient group; for every element would be
in its place, fulfilling its appropriate function like the pieces
in a perfect orchestra. Justice in a society would be like
that harmony of relationships whereby the planets are held
together in their orderly (or, as Pythagoras would have said,
their musical) movement. So organized, a society is fit for
survival; and justice receives a kind of Darwinian sanction.
Where men are out of their natural places, where the business

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THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY

man subordinates the statesman, or the soldier usurps the posi-
tion of the king — there the coordination of parts is destroyed,
the joints decay, the society disintegrates and dissolves.
Justice is effective coordination.

And in the individual too, justice is effective coordination,
the harmonious functioning of the elements in a man, each
in its fit place and each making its cooperative contribution
to behavior. Every individual is a cosmos or a chaos of
desires, emotions and ideas; let these fall into harmony, and
the individual survives and succeeds ; let them lose their proper
place and function, let emotion try to become the light of
action as well as its heat (as in the fanatic), or let thought
try to become the heat of action as well as its light (as in
the intellectual) — and disintegration of personality begins,
failure advances like the inevitable night. Justice is a taxis
Tcai Tcosmos — an order and beauty — of the parts of the soul;
it is to the soul as health is to the body. All evil is dis-
harmony: between man and nature, or man and men, or man
and himself.

So Plato replies to Thrasymachus and Callicles, and to all
Nietzscheans forever: Justice is not mere strength, but
harmonious strength — desires and men falling into that order
which constitutes intelligence and organization; justice is not
the right of the stronger, but the effective harmony of the
whole. It is true that the individual who gets out of the
place to which his nature and talents adapt him may for a
time seize some profit and advantage; but an inescapable
Nemesis pursues him — as Anaxagoras spoke of the Furies
pursuing any planet that should wander out of its orbit ; the
terrible baton of the Nature of Things drives the refractory
instrument back to its place and its pitch and its natural
note. The Corsican lieutenant may try to rule Europe with
a ceremonious despotism fitted better to an ancient monarchy
than to a dynasty bom overnight ; but he ends on a prison-rock
in the sea, ruefully recognizing that he is “the slave of the Na-
ture of Things.” Injustice will out.

PLATO

49

There is nothing bizarrely new in this conception ; and in-
deed we shall do well to suspect, in philosophy, any doctrine
which plumes itself on novelty. Truth changes her garments
frequently (like every seemly lady), but under the new habit
she remains always the same. In morals we need not expect
startling innovations: despite the interesting adventures of
Sophists and Nietzscheans, all moral conceptions revolve about
the good of the whole. Morality begins with association and
interdependence and organization; life in society requires the
concession of some part of the individual’s sovereignty to the
common order; and ultimately the norm of conduct becomes
the welfare of the group. Nature will have it so, and her judg-
ment is always final; a group survives, in competition or con-
flict with another group, according to its unity and power,
according to the ability of its members to cooperate for com-
mon ends. And what better cooperation could there be than
that each should be doing that which he can do best? This
is the goal of organization which every society must seek, if
it would have life. Morality, said Jesus, is kindness to the
weak; morality, said Nietzsche, is the bravery of the strong;
morality, says Plato, is the effective harmony of the whole.
Probably all three doctrines must be combined to find a per-
fect ethic ; but can we doubt which of the elements is funda-
mental?

x. CRITICISM

And now what shall we say of this whole Utopia? Is it
feasible? And if not, has it any practicable features which
we could turn to contemporary use? Has it ever in any place
or measure been realized?

At least the last question must be answered in Plato’s favor.
For a thousand years Europe was ruled by an order of
guardians considerably like that which was visioned by our
philosopher. During the Middle Ages it was customary to
classify the population of Christendom into laboratores (work-
ers), bellatores (soldiers), and oratores (clergy). The last

50

THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY

group, though small in number, monopolized the instruments
and opportunities of culture, and ruled with almost unlimited
sway half of the most powerful continent on the globe. The
clergy, like Plato’s guardians, were placed in authority not
by the suffrages of the people, but by their talent as shown in
ecclesiastical studies and administration, by their disposition
to a life of meditation and simplicity, and (perhaps it should
be added) by the influence of their relatives with the powers
of state and church. In the latter half of the period in which
they ruled, the clergy were as free from family cares as even
Plato could desire; and in some cases, it would seem, they en-
joyed no little of the reproductive freedom accorded to the
guardians. Celibacy was part of the psychological structure
of the power of the clergy; for on the one hand they were
unimpeded by the narrowing egoism of the family, and on
the other their apparent superiority to the call of the flesh
added to the awe in which lay sinners held them, and to the
readiness of these sinners to bare their lives in the confessional.

Much of the politics of Catholicism was derived from Plato’s
“royal lies,” or influenced by them: the ideas of heaven, pur-
gatory, and hell, in their medieval form, are traceable to the
last book of the Republic; the cosmology of scholasticism
comes largely from the Timceus; the doctrine of realism (the
objective reality of general ideas) was an interpretation of
the doctrine of Ideas; even the educational “quadrivium”
(arithmetic, geometry, astronomy and music) was modeled on
the curriculum outlined in Plato. With this body of doctrine
the people of Europe were ruled with hardly any resort to
force ; and they accepted this rule so readily that for a thou-
sand years they contributed plentiful material support to their
rulers, and asked no voice in the government. Nor was this
acquiescence confined to the general population; merchants
and soldiers, feudal chieftains and civil powers all bent the
knee to Rome. It was an aristocracy of no mean political
sagacity; it built probably the most marvelous and powerful
organization which the world has ever known.

PLATO

61

The Jesuits who for a time ruled Paraguay were semi-
Platonic guardians, a clerical oligarchy empowered by the
possession of knowledge and skill in the midst of a barbarian
population. And for a time the Communist Party which ruled
Russia after the revolution of November, 1917, took a form
strangely reminiscent of the Republic . They were a small
minority, held together almost by religious conviction, wield-
ing the weapons of orthodoxy and excommunication, as sternly
devoted to their cause as any saint to his, and living a frugal
existence while ruling half the soil of Europe.

Such examples indicate that within limits and with modifica-
tions, Plato’s plan is practicable; and indeed he himself had
derived it largely from actual practice as seen on his travels.
He had been impressed by the Egyptian theocracy: here was
a great and ancient civilization ruled by a small priestly class;
and compared with the bickering and tyranny and incompe-
tence of the Athenian Ecclesia Plato felt that the Egyptian
government represented a much higher form of state (Laws,
819)- In Italy he had stayed for a time with a Pythagorean
community, vegetarian and communist, which had for genera*
tions controlled the Greek colony in which it lived. In Sparta
he had seen a small ruling class living a hard and simple life in
common in the midst of a subject population; eating together,
restricting mating for eugenic ends, and giving to the brave
the privilege of many wives. He had no doubt heard Euripi-
des advocate a community of wives, the liberation of slaves, and
the pacification of the Greek world by an Hellenic league
(Medea, 230; Fragm., 655) ; no doubt, too, he knew some of
the Cynics who had developed a strong communist movement
among what one would now call the Socratic Left. In short,
Plato must have felt that in propounding his plan he was not
making an impossible advance on realities which his eyes had
seen.

Yet critics from Aristotle’s day to ours have found in the
Republic many an opening for objection and doubt. “These
things and many others,” says the Stagyrite, with cynical

m

THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY'

brevity, “have been invented several times over in the course of
ages.” It is very pretty to plan a society in which all men will
be brothers ; but to extend such a term to all our male contem-
poraries is to water out of it all warmth and significance.
So with common property: it would mean a dilution of respon-
sibility; when everything belongs to everybody nobody will
take care of anything. And finally, argues the great con-
servative, communism would fling people into an intolerable
continuity of contact ; it would leave no room for privacy or in-
dividuality ; and it would presume such virtues of patience and
cooperation as only a saintly minority possess. “We must
neither assume a standard of virtue which is above ordinary
persons, nor an education which is exceptionally favored by
nature and circumstance ; but we must have regard to the life
which the majority can share, and to the forms of government
to which states in general can attain.”

So far Plato’s greatest (and most jealous) pupil; and most
of the criticisms of later date strike the same chord. Plato
underrated, we are told, the force of custom accumulated in
flie institution of monogamy, and in the moral code attached
io that institution; he underestimated the possessive jealousy
of males in supposing that a man would be content to have
merely an aliquot portion of a wife ; he minimized the maternal
instinct in supposing that mothers would agree to have their
children taken from them and brought up in a heartless
anonymity. And above all he forgot that in abolishing the
family he was destroying the great nurse of morals and the
chief source of those cooperative and communistic habits which
would have to be the psychological basis of his state ; with un-
rivaled eloquence he sawed off the branch on which he sat.

To all these criticisms one can reply very simply, that they
destroy a straw man. Plato explicitly exempts the majority
from his communistic plan; he recognizes clearly enough that
only a few are capable of the material self-denial which he
proposes for his ruling class; only the guardians will call
every guardian brother or sister; only the guardians will be

PLATO

without gold or goods. The vast majority will retain all
respectable institutions — property, money, luxury, competi-
tion, and whatever privacy they may desire. They will
have marriage as monogamic as they can bear, and all the
morals derived from it and from the family; the fathers shall
keep their wives and the mothers shall keep their children ad
libitum and nauseam. As to the guardians, their need is not
so much a communistic disposition as a sense of honor, and love
of it ; pride and not kindness is to hold them up. And as for
the maternal instinct, it is not strong before the birth, or even
the growth, of the child; the average mother accepts the new-
born babe rather with resignation than with joy; love for it
is a development, not a sudden miracle, and grows as the child
grows, as it takes form under the painstaking care of the
mother; not until it has become the embodiment of maternal
artistry does it irrevocably catch the heart.

Other objections are economic rather than psychological.
Plato’s republic, it is argued, denounces the division of every
city into two cities, and then offers us a city divided into three.
The answer is that the division in the first case is by economic
conflict; in Plato’s state the guardian and auxiliary classes
are specifically excluded from participation in this competi-
tion for gold and goods. But then the guardians would
have power without responsibility; and would not this lead
to tyranny? Not at all; they have political power and di-
rection, but no economic power or wealth ; the economic class,
if dissatisfied with the guardians’ mode of rule, could hold
up the food supply, as Parliaments control executives by hold-
ing up the budget. Well, then, if the guardians have political
but not economic power, how can they maintain their rule?
Have not Harrington and Marx and many others shown that
political power is a reflex of economic power, and becomes pre-
carious as soon as economic power passes to a politically
subject group — as to the middle classes in the eighteenth cen-
tury?

This is a very fundamental objection, and perhaps a fatal

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THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY

one. The answer might be made that the power of the Roman
Catholic Church, which brought even kings to kneel at Ca-
nossa, was based, in its earlier centuries of rule, rather on the
inculcation of dogmas than on the strategy of wealth. But
it may be that the long dominion of the Church was due to the
agricultural condition of Europe: an agricultural population
is inclined to supernatural belief by its helpless dependence
on the caprice of the elements, and by that inability to control
nature which always leads to fear and thence to worship ; when
industry and commerce developed, a new type of mind and
man arose, more realistic and terrestrial, and the power of the
Church began to crumble as soon as it came into conflict with
this new economic fact. Political power must repeatedly re-
adjust itself to the changing balance of economic forces. The
economic dependence of Plato’s guardians on the economic
class would very soon reduce them to the controlled political
executives of that class ; even the manipulation of military
power would not long forestall this inevitable issue — any more
than the military forces of revolutionary Russia could pre-
vent the development of a proprietary individualism among
the peasants who controlled the growth of food, and there-
fore the fate of the nation. Only this would remain to Plato:
that even though political policies must be determined by the
economically dominant group, it is better that those policies
should be administered by officials specifically prepared for the
purpose, than by men who stumble out of commerce or manu-
facturing into political office without any training in the arts
of statesmanship.

What Plato lacks above all, perhaps, is the Heracleitean
sense of flux and change ; he is too anxious to have the moving
picture of this world become a fixed and still tableau. He
loves order exclusively, like any timid philosopher; he has
been frightened by the democratic turbulence of Athens into
an extreme neglect of individual values; he arranges men in
classes like an entomologist classifying flies; and he is not
averse to using priestly humbug to secure his ends. His state

PLATO

65

is static ; it might easily become an old-fogey society, ruled by
inflexible octogenarians hostile to invention and jealous of
change. It is mere science without art ; it exalts order, so dear
to the scientific mind, and quite neglects that liberty which is
the soul of art ; it worships the name of beauty, but exiles the
artists who alone can make beauty or point it out. It is a
Sparta or a Prussia, not an ideal state.

And now that these unpleasant necessities are candidly writ-
ten down, it remains to do willing homage to the power and
profundity of Plato’s conception. Essentially he is right — •
is he not? — what this world needs is to be ruled by its wisest
men. It is our business to adapt his thought to our own times
and limitations. Today we must take democracy for granted :
we cannot limit the suffrage as Plato proposed; but we can
put restrictions on the holding of office, and in this way secure
that mixture of democracy and aristocracy which Plato seems
to have in mind. We may accept without quarrel his con-
tention that statesmen should be as specifically and thoroughly
trained as physicians; we might establish departments of po-
litical science and administration in our universities ; and when
these departments have begun to function adequately we might
make men ineligible for nomination to political office unless
they were graduates of such political schools. We might even
make every man eligible for an office who had been trained for
it, and thereby eliminate entirely that complex system of nom-
inations in which the corruption of our democracy has its
seat; let the electorate choose any man who, properly trained
and qualified, announces himself as a candidate. In this way
democratic choice would be immeasurably wider than now,
when Tweedledum and Tweedledee stage their quadrennial
show and sham. Only one amendment would be required to
make quite democratic this plan for the restriction of office to
graduates in administrative technique ; and that would be such
equality of educational opportunity as would open to all men
and women, irrespective of the means of their parents, the
road to university training and political advancement. It

56

THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY

would be very simple to have municipalities and counties and
states offer scholarships to all graduates of grammar school,
high school and college who had shown a certain standard of
ability, and whose parents were financially unable to see them
through the next stage of the educational process. That
would be a democracy worthy of the name.

Finally, it is only fair to add that Plato understands that
his Utopia does not quite fall within the practicable realm.
He admits that he has described an ideal difficult of attain-
ment ; he answers that there is nevertheless a value in painting
these pictures of our desire; man’s significance is that he can
image a better world, and will some part of it at least into
reality; man is an animal that makes Utopias. “We look be-
fore and after and pine for what is not.” Nor is it all without
result : many a dream has grown limbs and walked, or grown
wings and flown, like the dream of Icarus that men might
fly. After all, even if we have but drawn a picture, it may
serve as goal and model of our movement and behavior ; when
sufficient of us see the picture and follow its gleam, Utopia
will find its way upon the map. Meanwhile “in heaven there
is laid up a pattern of such a city, and he who desires may
behold it, and beholding, govern himself accordingly. But
whether there really is or ever will be such a city on earth,
. , . he will act according to the laws of that city, and no
other” (592). The good man will apply even in the imper-
fect state, the perfect law.

Nevertheless, with all these concessions to doubt, the Master
was bold enough to risk himself when a chance offered to re-
alize his plan. In the year 387 b. c. Plato received an invita-
tion from Dionysius, ruler of the then flourishing and powerful
Syracuse, capital of Sicily, to come and turn his kingdom into
Utopia; and the philosopher, thinking like Turgot that it
was easier to educate one man — even though a king — than a
whole people, consented. But when Dionysius found that the
plan required either that he should become a philosopher off

PLATO

67

cease to be a king, he balked; and the upshot was a bitter
quarrel. Story has it that Plato was sold into slavery, to be
rescued by his friend and pupil Anniceris; who, when Plato’s
Athenian followers wished to reimburse him for the ransom he
had paid, refused, saying that they should not be the only
ones privileged to help philosophy. This (and, if wc may be-
lieve Diogenes Laertius, another similar) experience may ac-
count* for the disillusioned conservatism of Plato’s last work,
the Laws.

And yet the closing years of his long life must have been
fairly happy. His pupils had gone out in every direction,
and their success had made him honored everywhere. He was
at peace in his Academe, walking from group to group of his
students and giving them problems and tasks on which they
were to make research and, when he came to them again, give
report and answer. La Rochefoucauld said that ‘‘few knotf
how to grow old.” Plato knew: to learn like Solon and to
teach like Socrates; to guide the eager young, and find the
intellectual love of comrades. For his students loved him as
he loved them; he was their friend as well as their philosopher
and guide.

One of his pupils, facing that great abyss called marriage,
invited the Master to his wedding feast. Plato came, rich
with his eighty years, and joined the merry-makers gladly.
But as the hours laughed themselves away, the old philosopher
retired into a quiet corner of the house, and sat down on a chair
to win a little sleep. In the morning, when the feast was over,
the tired revellers came to wake him. They found that during
the night, quietly and without ado, he had passed from a little
sleep to an endless one. All Athens followed him to the grave.

CHAPTER H

ARISTOTLE AND GREEK SCIENCE

I. THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

A RISTOTLE was bom at Stagira, a Macedonian city
some two hundred miles to the north of Athens, in
the year 384 b. c. His father was friend and physi-
cian to Amyntas, King of Macedon and grandfather of Alex-
ander. Aristotle himself seems to have become a member of
the great medical fraternity of Asclepiads. He was brought
up in the odor of medicine as many later philosophers were
brought up in the odor of sanctity ; he had every opportunity
and encouragement to develop a scientific bent of mind; he
was prepared from the beginning to become the founder of
science.

We have a choice of stories for his youth. One narrative
represents him as squandering his patrimony in riotous liv-
ing, joining the army to avoid starvation, returning to Sta-
gira to practice medicine, and going to Athens at the age of
thirty to study philosophy under Plato. A more dignified
story takes him to Athens at the age of eighteen, and puts
him at once under the tutelage of the great Master; but even
in this likelier account there is sufficient echo of a reckless and
irregular youth, living rapidly. 1 The scandalized reader may
console himself by observing that in either story our philos-
opher anchors at last in the quiet groves of the Academy.

Under Plato he studied eight — or twenty — years ; and in-
deed the pervasive Platonism of Aristotle’s speculations — even
of those most anti-Platonic — suggests the longer period. One

iGrote, Aristotle , London, 1872, p. 4; Zeller, Aristotle and the Earlier Peri*
patetics, London, 1897, vol. i, pp. 6 f.

58

ARISTOTLE

59

would like to imagine these as very happy years: a brilliant
pupil guided by an incomparable teacher, walking like Greek
lovers in the gardens of philosophy. But they were both
geniuses ; and it is notorious that geniuses accord with one an-
other as harmoniously as dynamite with fire. Almost half a
century separated them? it was difficult for understanding to
bridge the gap of years and cancel the incompatibility of souls.
Plato recognized the greatness of this strange new pupil from
the supposedly barbarian north, and spoke of him once as the
Nous of the Academy, — as if to say, Intelligence personified.
Aristotle had spent money lavishly in the collection of books
(that is, in those printless days, manuscripts) ; he was the first,
after Euripides, to gather together a library ; and the founda-
tion of the principles of library classification was among his
many contributions to scholarship. Therefore Plato spoke
of Aristotle’s home as “the house of the reader,” and seems to
have meant the sincerest compliment; but some ancient gossip
will have it that the Master intended a sly but vigorous dig
at a certain book-wormishness in Aristotle. A more authentic
quarrel seems to have arisen towards the end of Plato’s life.
Our ambitious youth apparently developed an “CEdipus com-
plex” against his spiritual father for the favors and affections
of philosophy, and began to hint that wisdom would not die
with Plato ; while the old sage spoke of his pupil as a foal that
kicks his mother after draining her dry . 1 The learned Zel-
ler , 2 in whose pages Aristotle almost achieves the Nirvana of
respectability, would have us reject these stories ; but we may
presume that where there is still so much smoke there was
once a flame.

The other incidents of this Athenian period are still more
problematical. Some biographers tell us that Aristotle
founded a school of oratory to rival Isocrates ; and that he had
among his pupils in this school the wealthy Hermias, who was
soon to become autocrat of the city-state of Atameus. After

* Benn, The Greek Philosophers, London, 1882, vol. i, p. 283.

a Vol. i, p. 11.

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THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY

reaching this elevation Hermias invited Aristotle to his court;
and in the year 344 b. c. he rewarded his teacher for past fa-
vors by bestowing upon hiiin a sister (or a niece) in marriage.
One might suspect this as a Greek gift ; but the historians has-
ten to assure us that Aristotle, despite his genius, lived happily
enough with his wife, and spoke of her most affectionately in
his will. It was just a year later that Philip, King of Mace-
don, called Aristotle to the court at Pella to undertake the
education of Alexander. It bespeaks the rising repute of
our philosopher that the greatest monarch of the time, look-
ing about for the greatest teacher, should single out Aristotle
to be the tutor of the future master of the world.

Philip was determined that his son should have every educa-
tional advantage, for he had made for him illimitable designs.
His conquest of Thrace in 356 b. c. had given him command
of gold mines which at once began to yield him precious metal
to ten times the amount then coming to Athens from the failing
silver of Laurium; his people were vigorous peasants and
warriors, as yet unspoiled by city luxury and vice: here was
the combination that would make possible the subjugation of
a hundred petty city-states and the political unification of
Greece. Philip had no sympathy with the individualism that
had fostered the art and intellect of Greece but had at the
same time disintegrated her social order ; in all these little capi-
tals he saw not the exhilarating culture and the unsurpassable
art, but the commercial corruption and the political chaos ; he
saw insatiable merchants and bankers absorbing the vital re-
sources of the nation, incompetent politicians and clever ora-
tors misleading a busy populace into disastrous plots and wars,
factions cleaving classes and classes congealing into castes:
this, said Philip, was not a nation but only a welter of indi-
viduals — geniuses and slaves; he would bring the hand of
order down upon this turmoil, and make all Greece stand up
united and strong as the political center and basis of the world.
In his youth in Thebes he had learned the arts of military
strategy and civil organization under the noble Epaminondas ;

ARISTOTLE

61

and now, with courage as boundless as his ambition, he bettered
the instruction. In 338 b. c. he defeated the Athenians at
Chaeronea, and saw at last a Greece united, though with
chains. And then, as he stood upon this victory, and planned
how he and his son should master and unify the world, he fell
under an assassin’s hand.

Alexander, when Aristotle came, was a wild youth of thir-
teen ; passionate, epileptic, almost alcoholic ; it was his pastime
to tame horses untamable by men. The efforts of the philos-
opher to cool the fires of this budding volcano were not of much
nvail; Alexander had better success with Bucephalus than
Aristotle with Alexander. “For a while,” says Plutarch,
“Alexander loved and cherished Aristotle no less than as if
he had been his own father ; saying that though he had received
life from the one, the other had taught him the art of living.”
(“Life,” says a fine Greek adage, “is the gift of nature; but
beautiful living is the gift of wisdom.”) “For my part,” said
Alexander in a letter to Aristotle, “I had rather excel in the
knowledge of what is good than in the extent of my power and
dominion.” But this was probably no more than a royal-
youthful compliment; beneath the enthusiastic tyro of philos-
ophy was the fiery son of a barbarian princess and an untamed
king; the restraints of reason were too delicate to hold these
ancestral passions in leash; and Alexander left philosophy
after two years to mount the throne and ride the world. His-
tory leaves us free to believe (though we should suspect these
pleasant thoughts) that Alexander’s unifying passion derived
some of its force and grandeur from his teacher, the most
synthetic thinker in the history of thought; and that the con-
quest of order in the political realm by the pupil, and in the
philosophic realm by the master, were but diverse sides of one '
noble and epic project — two magnificent Macedonians unify-
ing two chaotic worlds.

Setting out to conquer Asia, Alexander left behind him, m
tht cities of Greece, governments favorable to him but popula*
tions resolutely hostile. The long tradition of a free and once

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THE STOKY OF PHILOSOPHY

imperial Athens made subjection — even to a brilliant world-
conquering despot — intolerable; and the bitter eloquence of
Demosthenes kept the Assembly always on the edge of revolt
against the “Macedonian party” that held the reins of city
power. Now when Aristotle, after another period of travel,
returned to Athens in the year 334 b. c., he very naturally
associated with this Macedonian group, and took no pains to
conceal his approval of Alexander’s unifying rule. As we
study the remarkable succession of works, in speculation and
research, which Aristotle proceeded to unfold in the last twelve
years of his life ; and as we watch him in his multifold tasks of
organizing his school, and of coordinating such a wealth of
knowledge as probably never before had passed through the
mind of one man; let us occasionally remember that this was
no quiet and secure pursuit of truth; that at any minute the
political sky might change, and precipitate a storm in this
peaceful philosophic life. Only with this situation in mind
shall we understand Aristotle’s political philosophy, and his
tragic end.

n. THE WORK OF ARISTOTLE

It was not hard for the instructor of the king of kings to
find pupils even in so hostile a city as Athens. When, in
the fifty-third year of his age, Aristotle established his school,
the Lyceum, so many students flocked to him that it became
necessary to make complicated regulations for the maintenance
of order. The students themselves determined the rules, and
elected, every ten days, one of their number to supervise the
School. But we must not think of it as a place of rigid dis-
cipline ; rather the picture which comes down to us is of scholars
eating their meals in common with the master, and learning
from him as he and they strolled up and down the Walk along
the athletic field from which the Lyceum took its name. 1

iThe Walk was called Peripatos ; hence the later name, Peripatetic School
The athletic field was part of the grounds of the temple of Apollo Lyceus— a
the protector of the flock against the wolf ( lycos ).

ARISTOTLE

The new School was no mere replica of that which Plato had
left behind him. The Academy was devoted above all to
mathematics and to speculative and political philosophy; the
Lyceum had rather a tendency to biology and the natural sci-
ences. If we may believe Pliny, 1 2 Alexander instructed his
hunters, gamekeepers, gardeners and fishermen to furnish
Aristotle with all the zoological and botanical material he
might desire; other ancient writers tell us that at one time he
had at his disposal a thousand men scattered throughout
Greece and Asia, collecting for him specimens of the fauna
and flora of every land. With this wealth of material he was
enabled to establish the first great zoological garden that the
world had seen. We can hardly exaggerate the influence of
this collection upon his science and his philosophy.

Where did Aristotle derive the funds to finance these under-
takings? He was himself, by this time, a man of spacious
income; and he had married into the fortune of one of the most
powerful public men in Greece. Athenaeus (no doubt with
some exaggeration) relates that Alexander gave Aristotle, for
physical and biological equipment and research, the sum of
800 talents (in modern purchasing power, some $4,000,000). 3 *
It was at Aristotle’s suggestion, some think, that Alexander
sent a costly expedition to explore the sources of the Nile
and discover the causes of its periodical overflow. 8 Such
works as the digest of 158 political constitutions, drawn up for
Aristotle, indicate a considerable corps of aides and secretaries.
In short we have here the first example in European history
of the large-scale financing of science by public wealth. What
knowledge would we not win if modern states were to support
research on a proportionately lavish scale!

Yet we should do Aristotle injustice if we were to ignore

1 Hiet. Nat., viii, 16; in Lewes, Aristotle , a Chapter from the History of
Science, London, 1864, p. 15.

2 Grant, Aristotle, Edinburgh, 1877, p. 18.

» The expedition reported that the inundations were due to the melting of

fhe snow on the mountains of Abyssinia.

64

THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY

the almost fatal limitations of equipment which accompanied
these unprecedented resources and facilities. He was com-
pelled “to fix time without a watch, to compare degrees of heat
without a thermometer, to observe the heavens without a tele-
scope, and the weather without a barometer. ... Of all our
mathematical, optical and physical instruments he possessed
only the rule and compass, together with the most imperfect
substitutes for some few others. Chemical analysis, correct
measurements and weights, and a thorough application of
mathematics to physics, were unknown. The attractive force
of matter, the law of gravitation, electrical phenomena, the
conditions of chemical combination, pressure of air and its
effects, the nature of light, heat, combustion, etc., in short, all
the facts on which the physical theories of modern science are
based were wholly, or almost wholly, undiscovered.” 1

See, here, how inventions make history: for lack of a tele-
scope Aristotle’s astronomy is a tissue of childish romance;
for lack of a microscope his biology wanders endlessly astray.
Indeed, it was in industrial and technical invention that Greece
fell farthest below the general standard of its unparalleled
achievements. The Greek disdain of manual work kept every-
body but the listless slave from direct acquaintance with the
processes of production, from that stimulating contact with
machinery which reveals defects and prefigures possibilities;
technical invention was possible only to those who had no inter-
est in it, and could not derive from it any material reward.
Perhaps the very cheapness of the slaves made invention lag;
muscle was still less costly than machines. And so, while
Greek commerce conquered the Mediterranean Sea, and Greek
philosophy conquered the Mediterranean mind, Greek science
straggled, and Greek industry remained almost where iEgean
industry had been when the invading Greeks had come down
upon it, at Cnossus, at Tiryns and Mycene, a thousand
years before. No doubt we have here the reason why Aris-
totle so seldom appeals to experiment; the mechanisms of

1 Zeller. \, 264, M3.

ARISTOTLE

65

experiment had not yet been made; and the best he could do
was to achieve an almost universal and continuous observa-
tion. Nevertheless the vast body of data gathered by him
and his assistants became the groundwork of the progress of
science, the text-book of knowledge for two thousand years;
one of the wonders of the work of man.

Aristotle’s writings ran into the hundreds. Some ancient
authors credit him with four hundred volumes, others with a
thousand. What remains is but a part, and yet it is a library
in itself — conceive the scope and grandeur of the whole.
There are, first, the Logical works: “Categories,” “Topics,”
“Prior” and “Posterior Analytics,” “Propositions,” and “So-
phistical Refutation”; these works were collected and edited
by the later Peripatetics under the general title of Aristotle’s
“Organon,” — that is, the organ or instrument of correct think-
ing. Secondly, there are the Scientific works: “Physics,”
“On the Heavens,” “Growth and Decay,” “Meteorology,”
“Natural History,” “On the Soul,” “The Parts of Animals,”
“The Movements of Animals,” and “The Generation of Ani-
mals.” There are, thirdly, the Esthetic works: “Rhetoric”
and “Poetics.” And fourthly come the more strictly Philo-
sophical works : “Ethics,” “Politics,” and “Metaphysics.” 1

Here, evidently, is the Encyclopedia Britannica of Greece:
every problem under the sun and about it finds a place; no
wonder there are more errors and absurdities in Aristotle than
in any other philosopher who ever wrote. Here is such a syn-
thesis of knowledge and theory as no man would ever achieve
again till Spencer’s day, and even then not half so magnifi-
cently ; here, better than Alexander’s fitful and brutal victory,
was a conquest of the world. If philosophy is the quest of
unity Aristotle deserves the high name that twenty centuries
gave him — Ille Philosophus: The Philosopher.

Naturally, in a mind of such scientific turn, poesy was lack-
ing. We must not expect of Aristotle such literary brilliance

a This Is the chronological order, so far as known (Zeller, I, 156 f). Our dis-
cussion will follow this order except in the case of the “Metaphysics.”

66

THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY

as floods the pages of the dramatist-philosopher Plato. In-
stead of giving us great literature, in which philosophy is em-
bodied (and obscured) in myth and imagery, Aristotle gives
us science, technical, abstract, concentrated; if we go to him
for entertainment we shall sue for the return of our money.
Instead of giving terms to literature, as Plato did, he built
the terminology of science and philosophy; we can hardly
speak of any science today without employing terms which he
invented; they lie like fossils in the strata of our speech: fac-
ulty, mean, maxim, (meaning, in Aristotle, the major premiss
of a syllogism), category, energy, actuality, motive, end, prin-
ciple, form — these indispensable coins of philosophic thought
were minted in his mind. And perhaps this passage from
delightful dialogue to precise scientific treatise was a neces-
sary step in the development of philosophy ; and science, which
is the basis and backbone of philosophy, could not grow until
it had evolved its own strict methods of procedure and express
sion. Aristotle, too, wrote literary dialogues, as highly re^
puted in their day as Plato’s; but they are lost, just as the
scientific treatises of Plato have perished. Probably time has
preserved of each man the better part-

Finally, it is possible that the writings attributed to Aris-
totle were not his, but were largely the compilations of students
and followers who had embalmed the unadorned substance of
his lectures in their notes. It does not appear that Aristotle
published in his life-time any technical waitings except those
on logic and rhetoric; and the present f«rm of the logical
treatises is due to later editing. In the ~ase of the Meta-
physics and the Politics the notes left by Ari^otle seem to have
been put together by his executors without revision or altera-
tion. Even the unity of style which mark* Aristotle’s writ-
ings, and offers an argument to those who defend his direct
authorship, may be, after all, merely a unity given them
through common editing by the Peripatetic School. About
this matter there rages a sort of Homeric question, of almost
epic scope, into which the busy reader will not care to go, and

ARISTOTLE

m

on which a modest student will not undertake to judge. 1 We
may at all events be sure that Aristotle is the spiritual author
of all these books that bear his name : that the hand may be in
some cases another’s hand, but that the head and the heart
are his. 2

m. THE FOUNDATION OF LOGIC

The first great distinction of Aristotle is that almost with'
out predecessors, almost entirely by his own hard thinking, he
created a new science — Logic. Renan 8 speaks of “the ill
training of every mind that has not, directly or indirectly,
come under Greek discipline” ; but in truth the Greek intellect
itself was undisciplined ami chaotic till the ruthless formulas
of Aristotle provided a ready method for the test and correc-
tion of thought. Even Plato (if a lover may so far presume)
was an unruly and irregular soul, caught up too frequently in
a cloud of myth, and letting beauty too richly veil the face of
truth. Aristotle himself, as we shall see, violated his own can-
ons plentifully ; but then he was the product of his past, and
not of that future which his thought would build. The polit-
ical and economic decay of Greece brought a weakening of the
Hellenic mind and character after Aristotle; but when a new
race, after a millennium of barbaric darkness, found again the
leisure and ability for speculation, it was Aristotle’s “Or-
ganon” of logic, translated by Boethius (4*70-525 a. d.), that
became the very mould of medieval thought, the strict mother
of that scholastic philosophy which, though rendered sterile
by encircling dogmas, nevertheless trained the intellect of ado-

1 Cf. Zeller, ii, 204, note; and Shules History of the Aristotelian Writings .

2 The reader who wishes to go to the philosopher himself will find the Me-
teorology an interesting example of Aristotle’s scientific work; he will derive
much practical instruction from the Rhetoric; and he will find Aristotle at his
best in books i— ii of the Ethics , and books i-iv of the Politics . The best
translation of the Ethics is Welldon’s; of the Politics, Jowett’s. Sir Alexan-
der Grant’s Aristotle is a simple book; Zeller’s Aristotle (vols. iii-iv in his
Greek Philosophy ), is scholarly but dry; Gomperz’s Greek Thinkers (vol. iv) .
Is masterly but difficult.

8 History of the People of Israel a vol. v, p. 888.

68

THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY

lescent Europe to reasoning and subtlety, constructed tbe
terminology of modern science, and laid the bases of that same
maturity of mind which was to outgrow and overthrow the
very system and methods which had given it birth and sus-
tenance.

Logic means, simply, the art and method of correct think-
ing. It is the logy or method of every science, of every dis-
cipline and every art; and even music harbors it. It is a
science because to a considerable extent the processes of cor-
rect thinking can be reduced to rules like physics and geom-
etry, and taught to any normal mind; it is an art because
by practice it gives to thought, at last, that unconscious and
immediate accuracy which guides the fingers of the pianist
over his instrument to effortless harmonies. Nothing is so
dull as logic, and nothing is so important.

There was a hint of this new science in Socrates* maddening
insistence on definitions, and in Plato’s constant refining of
every concept. Aristotle’s little treatise on Definitions shows
how his logic found nourishment at this source. “If you wish
to converse with me,” said Voltaire, “define your terms.”
How many a debate would have been deflated into a paragraph
if the disputants had dared to define their terms! This is
the alpha and omega of logic, the heart and soul of it, that
every important term in serious discourse shall be subjected
to strictest scrutiny and definition. It is difficult, and ruth-
lessly tests the mind ; but once done it is half of any task.

How shall we proceed to define an object or a term?
Aristotle answers that every good definition has two parts,
stands on two solid feet: first, it assigns the object in question
to a class or group whose general characteristics are also its
own — so man is, first of all, an animal; and secondly, it in-
dicates wherein the object differs from all the other members
in its class — so man, in the Aristotelian system, is a rational
animal, his “specific difference” is that unlike all other ani-
mals he is rational (here is the origin of a pretty legend).
Aristotle drops an object into the ocean of its class, then takes

ARISTOTLE

69

it out till dripping with generic meaning, with the marks of
its kind and group ; while its individuality and difference shine
out all the more clearly for this juxtaposition with other ob-
jects that resemble it so much and are so different.

Passing out from this rear line of logic we come into the
great battle-field on which Aristotle fought out with Plato the
dread question of “universals”; it was the first conflict in a
war which was to last till our own day, and make all medieval
Europe ring with the clash of “realists” and “nominalists.” 1
A universal, to Aristotle, is any common noun, any name capa-
ble of universal application to the members of a class : so ani-
mal, man, book, tree, are universals. But these universals are
subjective notions, not tangibly objective realities; they are
nomina (names), not res (things) ; all that exists outside us
is a world of individual and specific objects, not of generic and
universal things ; men exist, and trees, and animals ; but man-
in-general, or the universal man, does not exist, except in
thought; he is a handy mental abstraction, not an external
presence or re-ality.

Now Aristotle understands Plato to have held that uni-
versals have objective existence; and indeed Plato had said
that the universal is incomparably more lasting and important
and substantial than the individual, — the latter being but a
little wavelet in a ceaseless surf; men come and go, but man
goes on forever. Aristotle’s is a matter-of-fact mind ; as Wil-
liam James would say, a tough, not a tender, mind; he sees
the root of endless mysticism and scholarly nonsense in this
Platonic “realism”; and he attacks it with all the vigor of a
first polemic. As Brutus loved not Caesar less but Rome
more, so Aristotle says, Amicus Plato, sed magis arnica veritas
— “Dear is Plato, but dearer still is truth.”

A hostile commentator might remark that Aristotle (like
Nietzsche) criticizes Plato so keenly because he is conscious
of having borrowed from him generously; no man is a hero

lit was in reference to this debate that Friedrich Schlegel said, “Every
man is bom either a Platonist or an Aristotelian” (in Benn, i, 291).

70

THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY

to his debtors. But Aristotle has a healthy attitude, never-
theless ; he is a realist almost in the modern sense ; he is resolved
to concern himself with the objective present, while Plato is
absorbed in a subjective future. There was, in the Socratic-
Platonic demand for definitions, a tendency away from things
and facts to theories and ideas, from particulars to general-
ities, from science to scholasticism; at last Plato became so
devoted to generalities that they began to determine his partic-
ulars, so devoted to ideas that they began to define or select
his facts. Aristotle preaches a return to things, to the “un-
withered face of nature” and reality ; he had a lusty preference
for the concrete particular, for the flesh and blood individual.
But Plato so loved the general and universal that in the Re-
public he destroyed the individual to make a perfect state.

Yet, as is the usual humor of history, the young warrior
takes over many of the qualities of the old master whom he
assails. We have always goodly stock in us of that which we
condemn : as only similars can be profitably contrasted, so only
similar people quarrel, and the bitterest wars are over the
slightest variations of purpose or belief. The knightly Cru-
saders found in Saladin a gentleman with whom they coulc
quarrel amicably; but when the Christians of Europe broke
into hostile camps there was no quarter for even the courtliest
foe. Aristotle is so ruthless with Plato because there is so
much of Plato in him ; he too remains a lover of abstractions
and generalities, repeatedly betraying the simple fact for some
speciously bedizened theory, and compelled to a continuous
struggle to conquer his philosophic passion for exploring the
empyrean.

There is a heavy trace of this in the most characteristic
and original of Aristotle’s contributions to philosophy — the
doctrine of the syllogism. A syllogism is a trio of proposi-
tions of which the third (the conclusion) follows from the
conceded truth of the other two (the “major” and “minor’*
premisses). E. g., man is a rational animal; but Socrates is a

ARISTOTLE

n

man ; therefore Socrates is a rational animal. The mathemat-
ical reader will see at once that the structure of the syllogism
resembles the proposition that two things equal to the same
thing are equal to each other; if A is B, and C is A, then C
is B. As in the mathematical case the conclusion is reached
by canceling from both premisses their common term, A; so
in our syllogism the conclusion is reached by canceling from
both premisses their common term “man,” and combining
what remains. The difficulty, as logicians have pointed out
from the days of Pyrrho to those of Stuart Mill, lies in this,
that the major premiss of the syllogism takes for granted
precisely the point to be proved; for if Socrates is not rational
(and no one questions that he is a man) it is not uni-
versally true that man is a rational animal. Aristotle would
reply, no doubt, that where an individual is found to have a
large number of qualities characteristic of a class (“Socrates
is a man”), a strong presumption is established that the in*
dividual has the other qualities characteristic of the class
(“rationality”). But apparently the syllogism is not a
mechanism for the discovery of truth so much as for the clari-
fication of exposition and thought.

All this, like the many other items of the Organon, has its
value : “Aristotle has discovered and formulated every canon of
theoretical consistency, and every artifice of dialectical debate,
with an industry and acuteness which cannot be too highly
extolled; and his labors in this direction have perhaps con-
tributed more than any other single writer to the intellectual
stimulation of after ages.” 1 But no man ever lived who could
lift logic to a lofty strain: a guide to correct reasoning is as
elevating as a manual of etiquette ; we may use it, but it hardly
spurs us to nobility. Not even the bravest philosopher would
sing to a book of logic underneath the bough. One always
feels towards logic as Virgil bade Dante feel towards those who
had been damned because of their colorless neutrality: No&
i Benn , i, 307.

72

THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY

ragionam di lor , ma guar da e passa 1 — “Let us think no more
about them, but look once and pass on.”

IV. THE ORGANIZATION OF SCIENCE

1. Greek Science Before Aristotle

“Socrates,” says Renan, 2 “gave philosophy to mankind,
and Aristotle gave it science. There was philosophy before
Socrates, and science before Aristotle ; and since Socrates and
since Aristotle, philosophy and science have made immense ad-
vances. Rut all has been built upon the foundation which
they laid.” Before Aristotle, science was in embryo ; with him
it was born.

Earlier civilizations than the Greek had made attempts at
science ; but so far as we can catch their thought through their
still obscure cuneiform and hieroglyphic script, their science
was indistinguishable from theology. That is to say, these
pre-Hellenic peoples explained every obscure operation in na-
ture by some supernatural agency; everywhere there were
gods. Apparently it was the Ionian Greeks who first dared
to give natural explanations of cosmic complexities and mys-
terious events: they sought in physics the natural causes of
particular incidents, and in philosophy a natural theory of
the whole. Thales (640-550 b. c.), the “Father of Philos-
ophy,” was primarily an astronomer, who astonished the na-
tives of Miletus by informing them that the sun and stars
(which they were wont to worship as gods) were merely balls
of fire. His pupil Anaximander (610-540 b. c.), the first
Greek to make astronomical and geographical charts, believed
that the universe had begun as an undifferentiated mass, from
which all things had arisen by the separation of opposites;
that astronomic history periodically repeated itself in the evo-
lution and dissolution of an infinite number of worlds ; that
the earth was at rest in space by a balance of internal impul-

1 Inferno , iii, 60.

2 Life of Jesus, ch. 28.

ARISTOTLE

TO

sions (like Buridan’s ass) ; that all our planets had once been
fluid, but had been evaporated by the sun; that life had first
been formed in the sea, but had been driven upon the land by
the subsidence of the water; that of these stranded animals
some had developed the capacity to breathe air, and had so
become the progenitors of all later land life; that man could
not from the beginning have been what he now was, for if
man, on his first appearance, had been so helpless at birth, and
had required so long an adolescence, as in these later days,
he could not possibly have survived. Anaximenes, another
Milesian (fl. 450 b. c.), described the primeval condition of
things as a very rarefied mass, gradually condensing into wind,,
cloud, water, earth, and stone; the three forms of matter-
gas, liquid and solid — were progressive stages of condensation ;
heat and cold were merely rarefaction and condensation ; earth-
quakes were due to the solidification of an originally fluid
earth ; life and soul were one, an animating and expansive force
present in everything everywhere. Anaxagoras (500-428
B. c.), teacher of Pericles, seems to have given a correct ex-
planation of solar and lunar eclipses; he discovered the proc-
esses of respiration in plants and fishes; and he explained
man’s intelligence by the power of manipulation that came
when the fore-limbs were freed from the tasks of locomotion.
Slowly, in these men, knowledge grew into science.

Heraclitus (530-470 b. c.), who left wealth and its cares
to live a life of poverty and study in the shade of the temple
porticoes at Ephesus, turned science from astronomy to earth-
lier concerns. All things forever flow and change, he said;
even in the stillest matter there is unseen flux and movement.
Cosmic history runs in repetitious cycles, each beginning and
ending in fire (here is one source of the Stoic and Christian
doctrine of last judgment and hell). “Through strife,” says
Heraclitus, “all things arise and pass away. . . . War is the
father and king of all: some he has made gods, and some men;
some slaves, and some free.” Where there is no strife there is
decay : “the mixture which is not shaken decomposes.” In tViia

74

THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY

flux of change and struggle and selection, only one thing it
constant, and that is law. “This order, the same for all
things, no one of gods or men has made; but it always was,
and is, and shall be.” Empedocles (fl. 445 b. c., in Sicily) de-
veloped to a further stage the idea of evolution. 1 Organs arise
not by design but by selection. Nature makes many trials
and experiments with organisms, combining organs variously;
where the combination meets environmental needs the organ-
ism survives and perpetuates its like; where the combination
fails, the organism is weeded out; as time goes on, organisms
are more and more intricately and successfully adapted to
their surroundings. Finally, in Leucippus (fl. 445 b. c.) and
Democritus (460-360), master and pupil in Thracian Abdera,
we get the last stage of pre-Aristotelian science — materialistic,
deterministic atomism. “Everything,” said Leucippus, “is
driven by necessity.” “In reality,” said Democritus, “there
are only atoms and the void.” Perception is due to the ex-
pulsion of atoms from the object upon the sense organ
There is or have been or will be an infinite number of worlds;
at every moment planets are colliding and dying, and new
worlds are rising out of chaos by the selective aggregation of
atoms of similar size and shape. There is no design ; the uni-
verse is a machine.

This, in dizzy and superficial summary, is the story of Greek
science before Aristotle. Its cruder items can be well for-
given when we consider the narrow circle of experimental an<\
observational equipment within which these pioneers were com-
pelled to work. The stagnation of Greek industry under the
incubus of slavery prevented the full development of these
magnificent beginnings; and the rapid complication of polit-
ical life in Athens turned the Sophists and Socrates and Plato
away from physical and biological research into the paths
of ethical and political theory. It is one of the many glories
of Aristotle that he was broad. and brave enough to com-

iCf. Osborn, From the Greeks to Darwin; and M, Arnold, Empedocles <m
Etna .

ARISTOTLE

79

pass and combine these two lines of Greek thought, the
physical and the moral; that going back beyond his teacher,
he caught again the thread of scientific development in the pre-
Socratic Greeks, carried on their work with more resolute de-
tail and more varied observation, and brought together all
the accumulated results in a magnificent body of organized
science.

2. Aristotle as a Naturalist

If we begin here chronologically, with his Physics , we shall
be disappointed ; for we find that this treatise is really a meta-
physics, an abstruse analysis of matter, motion, space, time,
infinity, cause, and other such “ultimate concepts.” One of
the more lively passages is an attack on Democritus’ “void”:
there can be no void or vacuum in nature, says Aristotle, for
in a vacuum all bodies would fall with equal velocity; this
being impossible, “the supposed void turns out to have nothing
in it” — an instance at once of Aristotle’s very occasional hu-
mor, his addiction to unproved assumptions, and his tendency
to disparage his predecessors in philosophy. It was the habit
of our philosopher to preface his works with historical sketches
of previous contributions to the subject in hand, and to add to
every contribution an annihilating refutation. “Aristotle,
after the Ottoman manner,” says Bacon, “thought he could not
reign secure without putting all his brethren to death.” 1 But
to this fratricidal mania we owe much of our knowledge of pre-
Socratic thought.

For reasons already given, Aristotle’s astronomy represents
very little advance upon his predecessors. He rejects the view
of Pythagoras that the sun is the center of our system; he
prefers to give that honor to the earth. But the little treatise
on meteorology is full of brilliant observations, and even its
speculations strike illuminating fire. This is a cyclic world,
says our philosopher : the sun forever evaporates the sea, dries
up rivers and springs, and transforms at last the boundless

1 Advancement or Learning , bk. iii, ch. 4.

76

THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY

ocean into the barest rock ; while conversely the uplifted mois-
ture, gathered into clouds, falls and renews the rivers and the
seas. Everywhere change goes on, imperceptibly but effec-
tively. Egypt is “the work of the Nile,” the product of its
deposits through a thousand centuries. Here the sea en-
croaches upon the land, there the land reaches out timidly into
the sea; new continents and new oceans rise, old oceans and
old continents disappear, and all the face of the world is
changed and rechanged in a great systole and diastole of
growth and dissolution. Sometimes these vast effects occur
suddenly, and destroy the geological and material bases of
civilization and even of life ; great catastrophes have period-
ically denuded the earth and reduced man again to his first
beginnings; like Sisyphus, civilization has repeatedly neared
its zenith only to fall back into barbarism and begin da capo
its upward travail. Hence the almost “eternal recurrence,”
in civilization after civilization, of the same inventions and dis-
coveries, the same “dark ages” of slow economic and cultural
accumulation, the same rebirths of learning and science and
art. No doubt some popular myths are vague traditions sur-
viving from earlier cultures. So the story of man runs in a
dreary circle, because he is not yet master of the earth that
holds him.

3. The Foundation of Biology

As Aristotle walked wondering through his great zoological
garden, he became convinced that the infinite variety of life
could be arranged in a continuous series in which each link
would be almost indistinguishable from the next. In all re-
spects, whether in structure, or mode of life, or reproduction
and rearing, or sensation and feeling, there are minute grada-
tions and progressions from the lowest organisms to the high-
est. 1 At the bottom of the scale we can scarcely divide the
living from the “dead”; “nature makes so gradual a transi-
tion from the inanim ate to the animate kingdom that the bound-
iHist. Animalvwm, viii.

ARISTOTLE

77

.ary lines which separate them are indistinct and doubtful’*;
and perhaps a degree of life exists even in the inorganic.
Again, many species cannot with certainty be called plants
or animals. And as in these lower organisms it is almost
impossible at times to assign them to their proper genus and
species, so similar are they; so in every order of life the con-
tinuity of gradations and differences is as remarkable as the
diversity of functions and forms. But in the midst of this
bewildering richness of structures certain things stand out
convincingly: that life has grown steadily in complexity and
in power ; 1 that intelligence has progressed in correlation with
complexity of structure and mobility of form ; 2 that there
has been an increasing specialization of function, and a contin-
uous centralization of physiological control . 3 Slowly life
created for itself a nervous system and a brain; and mind
moved resolutely on towards the mastery of its environment.

The remarkable fact here is that with all these gradations
and similarities leaping to Aristotle’s eyes, he does not come
to the theory of evolution. He rejects Empedocles’ doctrine
that all organs and organisms are a survival of the fittest,-
and Anaxagoras’ idea that man became intelligent by using his
hands for manipulation rather than for movement; Aristotle
thinks, on the contrary, that man so used his hands because
he had become intelligent . 5 Indeed, Aristotle makes as many
mistakes as possible for a man who is founding the science of
biology. He thinks, for example, that the male element in
reproduction merely stimulates and quickens ; it does not occur
to him (what we now know from experiments in parthenogene-
sis) that the essential function of the sperm is not so much to
fertilize the ovum as to provide the embryo with the heritable
qualities of the male parent, and so permit the offspring to
be a vigorous variant, a new admixture of two ancestral lines.

1 De Anvma , ii, 2.

2 De Partibus Anvmalmm, i, 7; ii, 10.

*Ibid, iv,5-6.

4 De Anima , ii, 4.

*De Part, An,, iv. 10.

78

THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY

As human dissection was not practised in his time, he is par-
ticularly fertile in physiological errors: he knows nothing of
muscles, not even of their existence; he does not distinguish
arteries from veins ; he thinks the brain is an organ for cooling
the blood; he believes, forgivably, that man has more sutures
in the skull than woman ; he believes, less forgivably, that man
has only eight ribs on each side; he believes, incredibly, and
unforgivably, that woman has fewer teeth than man . 1 Ap-
parently his relations with women were of the most amicable
kind.

Yet he makes a greater total advance in biology than any
Greek before or after him. He perceives that birds and rep-
tiles are near allied in structure; that the monkey is in form
intermediate between quadrupeds and man ; and once he boldly
declares that man belongs in one group of animals with the
viviparous quadrupeds (our “mammals ”). 2 He remarks that
the soul in infancy is scarcely distinguishable from the soul
of animals . 8 He makes the illuminating observation that diet
often determines the mode of life; “for of beasts some are gre-
garious, and others solitary — they live in the way which is
best adapted to . . . obtain the food of their choice.” 4 He
anticipates Von Baer’s famous law that characters common to
the genus (like eyes and ears) appear in the developing or-
ganism before characters peculiar to its species (like the
“formula” of the teeth), or to its individual self (like the final
color of the eyes) ; 5 and he reaches out across two thousand
years to anticipate Spencer’s generalization that individuation
varies inversely as genesis — that is, that the more highly de-
veloped and specialized a species or an individual happens to
be, the smaller will be the number of its offspring . 8 He no-

1 Gomperz, iv, 57 ; Zeller, i, 262, note; Lewes, 158, 165, etc*

* Hist. An. i, 6; & &
a Ibid., viii, 1.

4 Politic 8 , 1, 8 .
a Hist. An. i, 6; ii, 8.

&De Generation# Animalmm , ii, 13.

ARISTOTLE

79

tices and explains reversion to type — the tendency of a prom-
inent variation (like genius) to be diluted in mating and lost
in successive generations. He makes many zoological observa-
tions which, temporarily rejected by later biologists, have been
confirmed by modern research — of fishes that make nests, for
example, and sharks that boast of a placenta.

And finally he establishes the science of embryology. “He
who sees things grow from their beginning,” he writes, “will
have the finest view of them.” Hippocrates (b. 460 b. c.),
greatest of Greek physicians, had given a fine example of the
experimental method, by breaking a hen’s eggs at various
stages of incubation; and had applied the results of these
studies in his treatise “On the Origin of the Child.” Aristotle
followed this lead and performed experiments that enabled
him to give a description of the development of the chick
which even today arouses the admiration of embryologists. 1
He must have performed some novel experiments in genetics,
for he disproves the theory that the sex of the child depends
on what testis supplies the reproductive fluid, by quoting a
case where the right testis of the father had been tied and yet
the children had been of different sexes. 2 He raises some very
modem problems of heredity. A woman of Elis had married
a negro ; her children were all whites, but in the next genera-
tion negroes reappeared ; where, asks Aristotle, was the black-
ness hidden in the middle generation? 3 There was but a
step from such a vital and intelligent query to the epochal
experiments of Gregor Mendel (1822-1882). Prudens
qucestio dimidium scientioe - — to know what to ask is already
to know half. Surely, despite the errors that mar these bio-
logical works, they form the greatest monument ever raised to
the science by any one man. When we consider that before
Aristotle there had been, so far as we know, no biology be-

1 De Part , An., iii, 4.

2 Lewes, 112.

8 Gomperz, iv, 169.

80

THE STORY OE PHILOSOPHY

yond scattered observations, we perceive that this achievement
alone might have sufficed for one life-time, and would have
given immortality. But Aristotle had only begun.

V. METAPHYSICS AND THE NATURE OE GOD

His metaphysics grew out of his biology. Everything in
the world is moved by an inner urge to become something
greater than it is. Everything is both the form or reality
which has grown out of something which was its matter or
raw material ; and it may in its turn be the matter out of which
still higher forms will grow. So the man is the form of
which the child was the matter; the child is the form and its
embryo the matter; the embryo the form, the ovum the
matter ; and so back till we reach in a vague way the concep-
tion of matter without form at all. But such a formless
matter would be no-thing, for every thing has a form.
Matter, in its widest sense, is the possibility of form; form is
the actuality, the finished reality, of matter. Matter ob-
structs, form constructs. Form is not merely the shape but
the shaping force, an inner necessity and impulse which moulds
mere material to a specific figure and purpose; it is the reali-
zation of a potential capacity of matter ; it is the sum of the
powers residing in anything to do, to be, or to become. Na-
ture is the conquest of matter by form, the constant progres-
sion and victory of life . 1

Everything in the world moves naturally to a specific ful-
filment. Of the varied causes which determine an event, the
final cause, which determines the purpose, is the most decisive
and important. The mistakes and futilities of nature are due
to the inertia of matter resisting the forming force of purpose
—hence the abortions and monsters that mar the panorama
of life. Development is not haphazard or accidental (else

i Half of our readers will bel pleased, and the other half amused, to learn
that among Aristotle’s favorite examples of matter and form are woman and
man; the male is the active, formative principle; the female is passive clay,
waiting to be formed. Female offspring are the result of the failure of form
to dominate matter (De Gen . An., i, 2).

ARISTOTLE

81

how could we explain the almost universal appearance and
transmission of useful organs?) ; everything is guided in a
certain direction from within, by its nature and structure and
entelechy ; 1 the egg of the hen is internally designed or
destined to become not a duck but a chick ; the acorn becomes
not a willow but an oak. This does not mean for Aristotle
that there is an external providence designing earthly struc-
tures and events; rather the design is internal, and arises
from the type and function of the thing. “Divine Provi-
dence coincides completely for Aristotle with the operation of
natural causes.” 2

Yet there is a God, though not perhaps the simple and
human god conceived by the forgivable anthropomorphism of
the adolescent mind. Aristotle approaches the problem from
the old puzzle about motion — how, he asks, does motion begin?
He will not accept the possibility that motion is as beginning-
less as he conceives matter to be: matter may be eternal,
because it is merely the everlasting possibility of future forms ;
but when and how did that vast process of motion and forma-
tion begin which at last filled the wide universe with an infinity
of shapes? Surely motion has a source, says Aristotle; and
if we are not to plunge drearily into an infinite regress, put-
ting back our problem step by step endlessly, we must posit
a prime mover unmoved ( prirtmm mobile immotum), a being
incorporeal, indivisible, spaceless, sexless, passionless, change-
less, perfect and eternal. God does not create, but he moves,
the world; and he moves it not as a mechanical force but as
the total motive of all operations in the world; “God moves
the world as the beloved object moves the lover.” 8 He is the
final cause of nature, the drive and purpose of things, the
form of the world; the principle of its life, the sum of its
vital processes and powers, the inherent goal of its growth,

lEntelecheia — having ( echo ) its purpose ( telos ) within ( entos ); one of
those magnificent Aristotelian terms which gather up into themselves a whole
philosophy.

2 Ethics, i, 10; Zeller, ii, 329.

• Metaphysics, ix, 7.

82

THE STOKY OF PHILOSOPHY

the energizing entelechy of the whole. He is pure energy ; 1
the Scholastic Actus Purus — activity per se ; perhaps the
mystic “Force” of modern physics and philosophy. He is
not so much a person as a magnetic power . 2

Yet, with his usual inconsistency, Aristotle represents God
as self-conscious spirit. A rather mysterious spirit ; for
Aristotle’s God never does anything ; he has no desires, no will,
no purpose; he is activity so pure that he never acts. He is
absolutely perfect ; therefore he cannot desire anything ; there-
fore he does nothing. His only occupation is to contemplate
the essence of things ; and since he himself is the essence of all
things, the form of all forms, his sole employment is the
contemplation of himself . 8 Poor Aristotelian God! — he is a
roi faineant , a do-nothing king ; “the king reigns, but he does
not rule.” No wonder the British like Aristotle ; his God is ob-
viously copied from their king.

Or from Aristotle himself. Our philosopher so loved con-
templation that he sacrificed to it his conception of divinity.
His God is of the quiet Aristotelian type, nothing romantic,
withdrawn to his ivory tower from the strife and stain of
things ; all the world away from the philosopher-kings of Plato,
or from the stern flesh-and-blood reality of Yahveh, or the
gentle and solicitous fatherhood of the Christian God.

VI. PSYCHOLOGY AND THE NATURE OF ART

Aristotle’s psychology is marred with similar obscurity and
vacillation. There are many interesting passages: the power
of habit is emphasized, and is for the first time called “second
nature”; and the laws of association, though not developed,
find here a definite formulation. But both the crucial prob-
lems of philosophical psychology — the freedom of the will and
the immortality of the soul — are left in haze and doubt.
Aristotle talks at times like a determinist — “We cannot di“

ilbid., xii, 8.

2 Grant, 173.

8 Meta, xii, 8; Ethics , x, Bo

ARISTOTLE

83

rectly will to be different from what we are”; but he goes on
to argue, against determinism, that we can choose what we
shall be, by choosing now the environment that shall mould us ;
so we are free in the sense that we mould our own characters
by our choice of friends, books, occupations, and amusements . 1
He does not anticipate the determinist’s ready reply that these
formative choices are themselves determined by our antecedent
character, and this at last by unchosen heredity and early en-
vironment. He presses the point that our persistent use of
praise and blame presupposes moral responsibility and free
will ; it does not occur to him that the determinist might reach
from the same premisses a precisely opposite conclusion — that
praise and blame are given that they may be part of the
factors determining subsequent action.

Aristotle’s theory of the soul begins with an interesting
definition. The soul is the entire vital principle of any or^
ganism, the sum of its powers and processes. In plants the
soul is merely a nutritive and reproductive power ; in animals
it is also a sensitive and locomotor power; in man it is as
Well the power of reason and thought . 2 The soul, as the
sum of the powers of the body, cannot exist without it; the
two are as form and wax, separable only in thought, but in
reality one organic whole ; the soul is not put into the body like
the quick-silver inserted by Daedalus into the images of
Venus to make “stand-ups” of them. A personal and partic-
ular soul can exist only in its own body. Nevertheless the
soul is not material, as Democritus would have it ; nor does it
all die. Part of the rational power of the human soul is
passive: it is bound up with memory, and dies with the body
that bore the memory; but the “active reason,” the pure
power of thought, is independent of memory and is untouched
with decay. The active reason is the universal as distin-
guished from the individual element in man; what survives
is not the personality, with its transitory affections and de-

1 Ethics , iii, 7.

2 De Animar) ii*

8 4

THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY

sires, but mind in its most abstract and impersonal form . 1
In short, Aristotle destroys the soul in order to give it im-
mortality ; the immortal soul is “pure thought,” undefiled with
reality, just as Aristotle’s God is pure activity, undefiled
with action. Let him who can, be comforted with this
theology. One wonders sometimes whether this metaphysical
eating of one’s cake and keeping it is not Aristotle’s subtle
Way of saving himself from anti-Macedonian hemlock?

In a safer field of psychology he writes more originally and
to the point, and almost creates the study of esthetics, the
theory of beauty and art. Artistic creation, says Aristotle,
springs from the formative impulse and the craving for emo-
tional expression. Essentially the form of art is an imitation
of reality; it holds the mirror up to nature . 2 There is in
man a pleasure in imitation, apparently missing in lower
animals. Yet the aim of art is to represent not the outward
appearance of things, but their inward significance; for this,
and not the external mannerism and detail, is their reality.
There may be more human verity in the sternly classic modera-
tion of the (Edipus Rex than in all the realistic tears of the
Trojan Women.

The noblest art appeals to the intellect as well as to the
feelings (as a symphony appeals to us not only by its har-
monies and sequences but by its structure and development) ;
and this intellectual pleasure is the highest form of joy to
which a man can rise. Hence a work of art should aim at
form, and above all at unity, which is the backbone of struc-
ture and the focus of form. A drama, e. g., should have
unity of action: there should be no confusing sub-plots, nor
any digressive episodes . 8 But above all, the function of art
is catharsis, purification: emotions accumulated in us under
the pressure of social restraints, and liable to sudden issue

*De Anima, ii, 4; i, 4; iii, 5.

2 Poetics , i, 1447.

s Aristotle gives only one sentence to unity of time; and does not mention
unity of place ; so that the “three unities” commonly foisted upon him are later
inventions (Norwood, Greek Tragedy , p. 42, note).

ARISTOTLE

85

in unsocial and destructive action, are touched off and sluiced
away in the harmless form of theatrical excitement ; so tragedy,
“through pity and fear, effects the proper purgation of these
emotions .” 1 Aristotle misses certain features of tragedy
(e. g., the conflict of principles and personalities) ; but in this
theory of catharsis he has made a suggestion endlessly fertile
in the understanding of the almost mystic power of art. It
is an illuminating instance of his ability to enter every field of
speculation, and to adorn whatever he touches.

vn. ETHICS AND THE NATURE OF HAPPINESS

And yet, as Aristotle developed, and young men crowded
about him to be taught and formed, more and more his mind
turned from the details of science to the larger and vaguer
problems of conduct and character. It came to him mors
clearly that above all questions of the physical world there
loomed the question of questions — what is the best life?—
what is life’s supreme good? — what is virtue? — how shall we
find happiness and fulfilment?

He is realistically simple in his ethics. His scientific train-
ing keeps him from the preachment of superhuman ideals
and empty counsels of perfection. “In Aristotle,” says
Santayana, “the conception of human nature is perfectly
sound ; every ideal has a natural basis, and everything natural
has an ideal development.” Aristotle begins by frankly
recognizing that the aim of life is not goodness for its own
sake, but happiness. “For we choose happiness for itself,
and never with a view to anything further ; whereas we choose
honor, pleasure, intellect . . . because we believe that through
them we shall be made happy.” 2 But he realizes that to call
happiness the supreme good is a mere truism; what is wanted
is some clearer account of the nature of happiness, and the
wav to it. He hopes to find this way by asking wherein man

i Poetics , vi, 14*49.

* Ethics, if 7.

86

THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY

differs from other beings ; and by presuming that man’s hap-
piness will lie in the full functioning of this specifically human
quality. Now the peculiar excellence of man is his power
of thought; it is by this that he surpasses and rules all other
forms of life; and as the growth of this faculty has given
him his supremacy, so, we may presume, its development will
give him fulfilment and happiness.

The chief condition of happiness, then, barring certain
physical pre-requisites, is the life of reason — the specific glory
and power of man. Virtue, or rather excellence , 1 will depend
on clear judgment, self-control, symmetry of desire, artistry
of means; it is not the possession of the simple man, nor the
gift of innocent intent, but the achievement of experience in
the fully developed man. Yet there is a road to it, a guide
to excellence, which may save many detours and delays: it is
the middle way, the golden mean. The qualities of character
can be arranged in triads, in each of which the first and last
qualities will be extremes and vices, and the middle quality a
virtue or an excellence. So between cowardice and rashness
is courage ; between stinginess and extravagance is liberality ;
between sloth and greed is ambition; between humility and
pride is modesty; between secrecy and loquacity, honesty; be-
tween moroseness and buffoonery, good humor ; between
quarrelsomeness and flattery, friendship; between Hamlet’s
indecisiveness and Quixote’s impulsiveness is self-control . 2
“Right,” then, in ethics or conduct, is not different from
“right” in mathematics or engineering; it means correct, fit,
what works best to the best result.

The golden mean, however, is not, like the mathematical
mean, an exact average of two precisely calculable extremes;

i The word excellence is probably the fittest translation of the Greek arete,
usually mistranslated virtue . The reader will avoid misunderstanding Plato
and Aristotle if, where translators write virtue, he will substitute excellence,
ability, or capacity . The Greek arete is the Roman virtus; both imply a
masculine sort of excellence (Ares, god of war; vir, a male). Classical an-
tiquity conceived virtue in terms of man, just as medieval Christianity con-
ceived it in terms of woman.

* Ethics, i, T

ARISTOTLE

87

it fluctuates with the collateral circumstances of each situa-
tion, and discovers itself only to mature and flexible reason.
Excellence is an art won by training and habituation : we do
not act rightly because we have virtue or excellence, but we
rather have these because we have acted rightly ; “these virtues
are formed in man by his doing the actions ” ; 1 we are what we
repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit:
“the good of man is a working of the soul in the way of
excellence in a complete life; . . . for as it is not one swal-
low or one fine day that makes a spring, so it is not one day
or a short time that makes a man blessed and happy.” 2 *

Youth is the age of extremes: “if the young commit a
fault it is always on the side of excess and exaggeration.”
The great difficulty of youth (and of many of youth’s elders)
is to get out of one extreme without falling into its opposite.
For one extreme easily passes into the other, whether through
“over-correction” or elsewise : insincerity doth protest too
much, and humility hovers on the precipice of conceit . 8
Those who are consciously at one extreme will give the name
of virtue not to the mean but to the opposite extreme. Some-
times this is well; for if we are conscious of erring in one
extreme “we should aim at the other, and so we may reach the
middle position, ... as men do in straightening bent
timber.” 4 Rut unconscious extremists look upon the golden
mean as the greatest vice; they “expel towards each other
the man in the middle position; the brave man is called rash
by the coward, and cowardly by the rash man, and in other
cases accordingly ” ; 5 so in modern politics the “liberal” is
called “conservative” and “radical” by the radical and the
conservative.

It is obvious that this doctrine of the mean is the formula-

1 Ethics, ii, 4.

2 Ibid., i, 7.

» “The vanity of Antisthenes” the Cynic, said Plato, “peeps out through the
holes in his cloak.”

4 Ethics, ii, 9.

sibid.j il 8-

88

THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY

tion of a characteristic attitude which appears in almost every
system of Greek philosophy, Plato had had it in mind when
he called virtue harmonious action ; Socrates when he identified
virtue*with knowledge. The Seven Wise Men had established
the tradition by engraving, on the temple of Apollo at Delphi,
the motto meden agan , — nothing in excess. Perhaps, as
Nietzsche claims , 1 all these were attempts of the Greeks to
check their own violence and impulsiveness of character ; more
truly, they reflected the Greek feeling that passions are not
of themselves vices, but the raw material of both vice and
virtue, according as they function in excess and dispropor-
tion, or in measure and harmony . 2

But the golden mean, says our matter-of-fact philosopher,
is not all of the secret of happiness. We must have, too, a
fair degree of worldly goods: poverty makes one stingy and
grasping; while possessions give one that freedom from care
and greed which is the source of aristocratic ease and charm.
The noblest of these external aids to happiness is friendship.
Indeed, friendship is more necessary to the happy than to
the unhappy ; for happiness is multiplied by being shared.
It is more important than justice : for “when men are friends,
justice is unnecessary; but when men are just, friendship is
still a boon.” “A friend is one soul in two bodies.” Yet
friendship implies few friends rather than many; “he who
has many friends has no friend” ; and “to be a friend to many
people in the way of perfect friendship is impossible.” Fine
friendship requires duration rather than fitful intensity ; and
this implies stability of character; it is to altered character
that we must attribute the dissolving kaleidoscope of friend-
ship. And friendship requires equality; for gratitude gives
it at best a slippery basis. “Benefactors are commonly held

1 The Birth of Tragedy .

2 Cf. a sociological formulation of the same idea: “Values are never abso~
lute, but only relative. ... A certain quality in human nature is deemed to
be less abundant than it ought to be; therefore we place a value upon it,
and . . . encourage and cultivate it. As a result of this valuation we call it
a virtue; but if the same quality should become superabundant we should call
it a vice and try to repress it.” — Carver, Essays in Social Justice.

ARISTOTLE

89

to have more friendship for the objects of their kindness than
these for them. The account of the matter which satisfies
most persons is that the one are debtors and the others
creditors, . . . and that the debtors wish their creditors out
of the way, while the creditors are anxious that their debtors
should be preserved.” Aristotle rejects this interpretation;
he prefers to believe that the greater tenderness of the bene-
factor is to be explained on the analogy of the artist’s affection
for his work, or the mother’s for her child. We love that
which we have made . 1

And yet, though external goods and relationships are
necessary to happiness, its essence remains within us, in
rounded knowledge and clarity of soul. Surely sense pleasure
is not the way: that road is a circle: as Socrates phrased
the coarser Epicurean idea, we scratch that we may itch, and
itch that we may scratch. Nor can a political career be the
way; for therein we walk subject to the whims of the people;
and nothing is so fickle as the crowd. No, happiness must
be a pleasure of the mind; and we may trust it only when it
comes from the pursuit or the capture of truth. “The opera-
tion of the intellect . . . aims at no end beyond itself, and finds
in itself the pleasure which stimulates it to further operation ;
and since the attributes of self-sufficiency, unweariedness, and
capacity for rest, . . . plainly belong to this occupation, in
it must lie perfect happiness.” 2

Aristotle’s ideal man, however, is no mere metaphysician.

He does not expose himself needlessly to danger, since
there are few things for which he cares sufficiently ; but he is
willing, in great crises, to give even his life, — knowing that
under certain conditions it is not worth while to live. He is
of a disposition to do men service, though he is ashamed to
have a service done to him. To confer a kindness is a mark
of superiority; to receive one is a mark of subordina-
tion . . . He does not take part in public displays • . •

^- Ethics, viii and ix.

2 Ibid,, x, 7.

90

THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY

He is open in his dislikes and preferences ; he talks and acts
frankly, because of his contempt for men and things . . *
He is never fired with admiration, since there is nothing
great in his eyes. He cannot live in complaisance with*
others, except it be a friend; complaisance is the charac-
teristic of a slave. . . . He never feels malice, and always
forgets and passes over injuries. . . . He is not fond of
talking. ... It is no concern of his that he should be
praised, or that others should be blamed. He does not
speak evil of others, even of his enemies, unless it be to
themselves. His carriage is sedate, his voice deep, his speech
measured; he is not given to hurry, for he is concerned
about only a few things; he is not prone to vehemence,
for he thinks nothing very important. A shrill voice and
hasty steps come to a man through care. . . . He bears
the accidents of life with dignity and grace, making the best
of his circumstances, like a skilful general who marshals his
limited forces with all the strategy of war. . « . He is his
own best friend, and takes delight in privacy whereas the
man of no virtue or ability is his own worst enemy, and is
afraid of solitude . 1

Such is the Superman of Aristotle.

Vffl. POLITICS

I. Commwnism and Conservatism

From so aristocratic an ethic there naturally follows (or was
the sequence the other way?) a severely aristocratic political
philosophy. It was not to be expected that the tutor of an
emperor and the husband of a princess would have any exag-
gerated attachment to the common people, or even to the
mercantile bourgeoisie; our philosophy is where our treasure
lies. But further, Aristotle was honestly conservative be-
cause of the turmoil and disaster that had come out of
Athenian democracy; like a typical scholar he longed for
order, security, and peace; this, he felt, was no time for

1 Ethic 8, iv, 3.

ARISTOTLE

91

political extravaganzas. Radicalism is a luxury of stability ;
we may dare to change things only when things lie steady
under our hands. And in general, says Aristotle, “the habit
of lightly changing the laws is an evil ; and when the advantage
of change is small, some defects whether in the law or in the
ruler had better be met with philosophic toleration. The
citizen will gain less by the change than he will lose by ac-
quiring the habit of disobedience.” 1 The power of the law
to secure observance, and therefore to maintain political
stability, rests very largely on custom; and “to pass lightly
from old laws to new ones is a certain means of weakening
the inmost essence of all law whatever.” 2 “Let us not dis-
regard the experience of ages: surely, in the multitude of
years, these things, if they were good, would not have re-
mained unknown.” 3

“These things,” of course, means chiefly Plato’s commu-
nistic republic. Aristotle fights the realism of Plato about
universals, and the idealism of Plato about government. He
finds many dark spots in the picture painted by the Master.
He does not relish the barrack-like continuity of contact to
which Plato apparently condemned his guardian philosophers ;
conservative though he is, Aristotle values individual quality,
privacy, and liberty above social efficiency and power. He
would not care to call every contemporary brother or sister,
nor every elder person father or mother; if all are your
brothers, none is; and “how much better it is to be the real
cousin of somebody than to be a son after Plato’s fashion !” 4
In a state having women and children in common, “love will
be watery. . . Of the two qualities which chiefly inspire regard
and affection — that a thing is your own, and that it awakens
real love in you — neither can exist in such a state” as Plato’s . 5

Perhaps there was, in the dim past, a communistic society,

1 Politics, ii, 8.

2 Ibid., v. 8.

*Ibid., ii, 5.

* Ibid., ii, 3.

s Ibid., 11,4.

98 THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY

when the family was the only state, and pasturage or simple
tillage the only form of life. But “in a more divided state
of society,” where the division of labor into unequally im-
portant functions elicits and enlarges the natural inequality of
men, communism breaks down because it provides no adequate
incentive for the exertion of superior abilities. The stimulus
of gain is necessary to arduous work; and the stimulus of
ownership is necessary to proper industry, husbandry and
care. When everybody owns everything nobody will take
care of anything. “That which is common to the greatest
number has the least attention bestowed upon it. Everyone
thinks chiefly of his own, hardly ever of the public, inter-
est.” 1 And “there is always a difficulty in living together, or
having things in common, but especially in having common
property. The partnerships of fellow-travellers” (to say
nothing of the arduous communism of marriage), “are an
example to the point ; for they generally fall out by the way,
and quarrel about any trifle that turns up.” 2

“Men readily listen” to Utopias, “and are easily induced to
believe that in some wonderful manner everybody will become
everybody’s friend, especially when some one is heard de-
nouncing the evils now existing, . . . which are said to arise
out of the possession of private property. These evils, how-
ever, arise from quite another source — the wickedness of human
nature.” 3 Political science does not make men, but must take
them as they come from nature.” 4

And human nature, the human average, is nearer to the
beast than to the god. The great majority of men are natural
dunces and sluggards; in any system whatever these men will
sink to the bottom; and to help them with state subsidies is

1 Politics, ii, 3.

2 Ibid., ii, 5.

&Ibid. Note that conservatives are pessimists, and radicals are opti-
mists, about human nature, which is probably neither so good nor so bad as
they would like to believe, and may be not so much nature as early training
and environment.

*Ibid., i, 10.

ARISTOTLE

“like pouring water into a leaking cask.” Such people must
be ruled in politics and directed in industry ; with their consent
if possible, without it if necessary. “From the hour of their
birth some are marked out for subjection, and others for com-
mand.” 1 “For he who can foresee with his mind is by nature
intended to be lord and master; and he who can work only
with his body is by nature a slave.” 2 The slave is to the
master what the body is to the mind; and as the body should
be subject to the mind, so “it is better for all inferiors that
they should be under the rule of a master.” 8 “The slave is
a tool with life in it, the tool is a lifeless slave.” And then
our hard-hearted philosopher, with a gli mm er of possibilities
which the Industrial Revolution has opened to our hands,
writes for a moment with wistful hope : “If every instrument
would accomplish its own work, obeying or anticipating the
will of others, ... if the shuttle would weave, or the plectrum
touch the lyre, without a hand to guide them, then chief work-
men would not need assistants, nor masters slaves.” 4

This philosophy typifies the Greek disdain for manual labor.
Such work in Athens had not become so complicated as it is
today, when the intelligence demanded in many manual trades
is at times much greater than that required for the operations
of the lower middle class, and even a college professor may
look upon an automobile mechanic (in certain exigencies) as
a very god; manual work was then merely manual, and
Aristotle looked down upon it, from the heights of philosophy,
as belonging to men without minds, as only fit for slaves, and
only fitting men for slavery. Manual labor, he believes,
dulls and deteriorates the mind, and leaves neither time nor
energy for political intelligence; it seems to Aristotle a rea-

1 Ibid., i, 5.

2 Ibid., i, 2. Perhaps slave is too harsh a rendering of doulos; the word
was merely a frank recognition of a brutal fact which in our day. is perfumed
with talk about the dignity of labor and the brotherhood of man. We easily
excel the ancients in making phrases.

a Ibid., i, 5.

6 Ibid., i, 4.

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sonable corollary that only persons of some leisure should
have a voice in government. 1 “The best form of state will
not admit mechanics to citizenship. ... At Thebes there was
a law that no man could hold office who had not retired from
business ten years before.” 2 Even merchants and financiers
are classed by Aristotle among slaves. “Retail trade is un-
natural, . . . and a mode by which men gain from one an-
other. The most hated sort of such exchange is . . . usury,
which makes a gain out of money itself, and not from its
natural use. For money was intended as an instrument of
exchange, and not as the mother of interest. This usury
(tokos), which means the birth of money from money, . . .
is of all modes of gain the most unnatural.” 3 Money should
not breed. Hence “the discussion of the theory of finance is
not unworthy of philosophy; but to be engaged in finance,
or in money-making, is unworthy of a free man.” 4

2. Marriage and Education

Woman is to man as the slave to the master, the manual to
the mental worker, the barbarian to the Greek. Woman is an
unfinished man, left standing on a lower step in the scale of
development.® The male is by nature superior, and the female
inferior; the one rules and the other is ruled; and this prin-
ciple extends, of necessity, to all mankind.” Woman is weak
of will, and therefore incapable of independence of character

1 Politics, iii, 3; vii, 8.

2 Ibid., iii, 5.

a Ibid. > i, 10. This view influenced the medieval prohibition of interest.

& Ibid. y 1, 11. Aristotle adds that philosophers could succeed in such fields
if they cared to descend into them; and he proudly points to Thales, who, fore-
seeing a good harvest, bought up all the reapers in his city, and then, at
harvest time, sold them at his own sweet price; whereupon Aristotle observes
that the universal secret of great riches is the creation of a monopoly.

6 De Gen. Animalium, ii, 8; Hist. Animalium, viii, 1; 'Pol., i, 5. Cf. Wein-
inger; and Meredith’s “Woman will be the last thing civilized by man”
( Ordeal of Richard Feverel, p. 1). It appears, however, that man was (or
will be) the last thing civilized by woman; for the great civilizing agencies are
the family and a settled economic life; and both of these are the creations of
woman.

ARISTOTLE

9&

dr position; her best condition is a quiet home life in which,
while ruled by the man in her external relations, she may be
in domestic affairs supreme. Women should not be made more
like men, as in Plato’s republic ; rather the dissimilarity should
be increased; nothing is so attractive as the different. “The
courage of a man and that of a woman are not, as Socrates
supposed, the same: the courage of a man is shown in com-
manding ; that of a woman in obeying. ... As the poet says,
‘Silence is a woman’s glory.’ ” 1

Aristotle seems to suspect that this ideal enslavement of
woman is a rare achievement for man, and that as often as
not the sceptre is with the tongue rather than with the arm.
As if to give the male an indispensable advantage, he advises
him to defer marriage till the vicinity of thirty-seven, and
then to marry a lass of some twenty years. A girl who is
rounding the twenties is usually the equal of a man of thirty,
but may perhaps be managed by a seasoned warrior of thirty*
seven. What attracts Aristotle to this matrimonial mathe-
matics is the consideration that two such disparate persons
will lose their reproductive power and passions at approxi-
mately the same time. “If the man is still able to beget
children while the woman is unable to bear them, or vice versa ,
quarrels and differences will arise. . . . Since the time of gen-
eration is commonly limited within the age of seventy years
in the man, and fifty in the woman, the commencement of their
union should conform to these periods. The union of male
and female when too young is bad for the creation of chil-
dren ; in all animals the off-spring of the young are small and
ill-developed, and generally female.” Health is more import-
ant than love. Further, “it conduces to temperance not to
marry too soon; for women who marry early are apt to be
wanton; and in men too the bodily frame is stunted if they
' marry while they are growing.” 2 These matters should not

1 Politics, i, 13.

2 Ibid., vii, 16: It is apparent that Aristotle has in mind only the tem-
perance of women; the moral effect of deferred marriage upon men does not
<$eem to agitate him.

THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY

96

be left to youthful caprice, they should he under state super-
vision and control: the state should determine the minimum
and maximum ages of marriage for each sex, the best seasons
for conception, and the rate of increase in population. If
the natural rate of increase is too high, the cruel practice of
infanticide may be replaced by abortion ; and “let abortion
be procured before sense and life have begun.” 1 There is an
ideal number of population for every state, varying with its
position and resources. “A state when composed of too few
is not, as a state should be, self-sufficing; while if it has too
many . . . it becomes a nation and not a state, and is al-
most incapable of constitutional government,” or of ethnic
or political unity. 2 Anything in excess of a population of
10,000 is undesirable.

Education, too, should be in the hands of the state. “That
which most contributes to the permanence of constitutions is
the adaptation of education to the form of government. . . .
The citizen should be moulded to the form of government un-
der which he lives.” 3 By state control of schools we might
divert men from industry and trade to agriculture ; and we
might train men, while keeping property private, to open their
possessions to discriminately common use. “Among good
men, with respect to the use of property, the proverb will hold,
that ‘friends should have all things in common.’ ” 4 But
above all, the growing citizen must be taught obedience to
law, else a state is impossible. “It has been well said that ‘he
who has never learned to obey cannot be a good commander.’
. . . The good citizen should be capable of both.” And only
a state system of schools can achieve social unity amid ethnic
heterogeneity ; the state is a plurality which must be made into
a unity and a community by education. 8 Let youth be taught,
too, the great boon it has in the state, the unappreciated s* 1 -

1 Politics, vii, 16.

2 Ibid., vii, 4.

8 Ibid., v, 9 ; viii, 1.

& Ibid., vi, 4; ii, 5.

6 Ibid., iii, 4; U, 5,

AKISTOTLE

9T

eurity which comes of social organization, the freedom that
comes of law. “Man, when perfected, is the best of animals ;
but when isolated he is the worst of all; for injustice is more
dangerous when armed, and man is equipped at birth with
the weapon of intelligence, and with qualities of character
which he may use for the vilest ends. Wherefore if he have
not virtue he is the most unholy and savage of animals, full
of gluttony and lust.” And only social control can give him
virtue. Through speech man evolved society; through soci-
ety, intelligence ; through intelligence, order ; and through or-
der, civilization. In such an ordered state the individual has
a thousand opportunities and avenues of development open
to him which a solitary life would never give. “To live alone,”
then, “one must be either an animal or a god.” 1

Hence revolution is almost always unwise ; it may achieve
some good, but at the cost of many evils, the chief of which
is the disturbance, and perhaps the dissolution, of that social
order and structure on which every political good depends.
The direct consequences of revolutionary innovations may be
calculable and salutary ; but the indirect are generally incal-
culable, and not seldom disastrous. “They who take only a
few points into account find it easy to pronounce judgment”;
and a man can make up his mind quickly if he has only a
little to make up. “Young men are easily deceived, for they
are quick to hope.” The suppression of long-established hab-
its brings the overthrow of innovating governments because
the old habits persist among the people; characters are not
so easily changed as laws. If a constitution is to be perma-
nent, all the parts of a society must desire it to be maintained.
Therefore a ruler who would avoid revolution should prevent
extremes of poverty and wealth,— “a condition which is most
often the result of war”; he should (like the English) encour-
age colonization as an outlet for a dangerously congested
population; and he should foster and practice religion. An

i Politics , i, 2. “Or,” adds Nietzsche, who takes nearly all of his political -
philosophy from Aristotle, “one must be both — that is, a philosopher.”

98

THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY

autocratic ruler particularly “should appear to be earnest in
the worship of the gods; for if men think that a ruler is re-
ligious and reveres the gods, they are less afraid of suffering
injustice at his hands, and are less disposed to conspire against
him, since they believe that the gods themselves are fighting
on his side.” 1

3. Democracy and Aristocracy

With such safeguards in religion, in education, and in the
ordering of family life, almost any of the traditional forms of
government will serve. All forms have good and bad com-
mingled in them, and are severally adapted to various condi-
tions. Theoretically, the ideal form of government would be
the centralization of all political power in the one best man.
Homer is right: “Bad is the lordship of many; let one be
your ruler and master.” For such a man law would be rather
an instrument than a limit : “for men of eminent ability there
is no law — they are themselves a law. Anyone would be ridic-
ulous who should attempt to make laws for them ; they would
probably retort what, in the fable of Antisthenes, the lions
said to the hares when, in the council of beasts, the latter began
haranguing and claiming equality for all — “Where are your
claws?” 2

But in practice, monarchy is usually the worst form of gov-
ernment, . for great strength and great virtue are not near
allied. Hence the best practicable polity is aristocracy, the
rule of the informed and capable few. Government is too com-
plex a thing to have its issues decided by number, when lesser
issues are reserved for knowledge and ability. “As the physi-
cian ought to be judged by the physician, so ought men in
general to be judged by their peers. . . . Now does not this
same principle apply to elections? For a right election can

1 Politics, iv, 5; ii, 9; v, 7; ii, 11.

2 Ibid., iii, 13. Aristotle probably had Alexander or Philip in mind while
writing this passage, just as Nietzsche seems to have been influenced towards
similar conclusions by the alluring careers of Bismarck and Napoleon.

ARISTOTLE

99

only be made by those who have knowledge: a geometrician,
e. g., will choose rightly in matters of geometry ; or a pilot in
matters of navigation. . . . x So that neither the election of
magistrates nor the calling of them to account should be en-
trusted to the many.’ 5

The difficulty with hereditary aristocracy is that it has no
permanent economic base; the eternal recurrence of the non-
veaux riches puts political office sooner or later at the disposal
of the highest bidder. “It is surely a bad thing that the
greatest offices . . . should be bought. The law which per-
mits this abuse makes wealth of more account than ability, and
the whole state becomes avaricious. For whenever the chiefs
of the state deem anything honorable, the other citizens are
sure to follow their example” (the “prestige imitation” of
modern social psychology) ; “and where ability has not the
first place there is no real aristocracy.” 1 2

Democracy is usually the result of a revolution against
plutocracy. “Love of gain in the ruling classes tends con-
stantly to diminish their number” (Marx’s “elimination of the
middle class”), “and so to strengthen the masses, who in the
end set upon their masters and establish democracies.” This
“rule by the poor” has some advantages. “The people,
though individually they may be worse judges than those who
have special knowledge, are collectively as good. Moreover,
there are some artists whose works are best judged not by
themselves alone, but by those who do not possess the art;
e. g., the user or master of a house will be a better judge of
it than the builder; . . . and the guest will be a better judge
of a feast than the cook.” 3 And “the many are more incor-
ruptible than the few; they are like the greater quantity of
water which is less easily spoiled than a little. The individual
is liable to be overcome by anger, or by some other passion,

1 Politics, tfi, IX. Cf. the modem argument for “occupational representa-
tion.”

2 Ibid., ii, 11.

a Ibid., iii, 15, 8, 11.

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and then his judgment is necessarily perverted ; but it is hardly
to be supposed that a great number of persons would all get
into a passion and go wrong at the same moment.” 1

Yet democracy is on the whole inferior to aristocracy . 2 For
it is based on a false assumption of equality ; it “arises out of
the notion that those who are equal in one respect (e. g., in
respect of the law) are equal in all respects ; because men are
equally free they claim to be absolutely equal.” The upshot
is that ability is sacrificed to number, while numbers are ma-
nipulated by trickery. Because the people are so easily
misled, and so fickle in their views, the ballot should be limited
to the intelligent. What we need is a combination of aristoc-
racy and democracy.

Constitutional government offers this happy union. It is
not the best conceivable government — that would be an aris-
tocracy of education — but it is the best possible state. “We
must ask what is the best constitution for most states, and the
best life for most men ; neither assuming a standard of excel-
lence which will be above ordinary persons, nor an education
exceptionally favored by nature or circumstance, nor yet an
ideal state which will be only an aspiration; but having in
mind such a life as the majority will be able to share, and a
form of government to which states in general can attain.”
“It is necessary to begin by assuming a principle of general
application, namely, that that part of the state which desires
the continuance of the government must be stronger than that
which does not ” ; 8 and strength consists neither in number
alone, nor in property alone, nor in military or political ability
alone, but in a combination of these, so that regard has to be
taken of “freedom, wealth, culture and noble birth, as well as
of mere numerical superiority.” Now where shall we find such

1 Politics, ili, 15. Tarde, Le Bon and other social psychologists assert pre-
cisely the contrary; and though they exaggerate the vices of the crowd, they
might find better support than Aristotle in the behavior of the Athenian As-
sembly 430-330 b. c.

2 Ibid., ii, 9.

zlbid., iv, 11, 10.

ARISTOTLE

101

ail economic majority to support our constitutional govern-
ment? Perhaps best in the middle class: here again we have
the golden mean, just as constitutional government itself would
be a mean between democracy and aristocracy. Our state will
be sufficiently democratic if the road to every office is open to
all; and sufficiently aristocratic if the offices themselves are
closed except to those who have traveled the road and arrived
fully prepared. From whatever angle we approach our
eternal political problem we monotonously reach the same con-
clusion: that the community should determine the ends to be
pursued, but that only experts should select and apply the
means; that choice should be democratically spread, but that
office should be rigidly reserved for the equipped and win-
nowed best.

rx. CRITICISM

What shall we say of this philosophy? Perhaps nothing
rapturous. It is difficult to be enthusiastic about Aristotle,
because it was difficult for him to be enthusiastic about any-
thing ; and si vis me flere, primum tibi flendum. 1 His motto
is nil admirari — to admire or marvel at nothing ; and we hesi-
tate to violate his motto in his case. We miss in him the re-
forming zeal of Plato, the angry love of humanity which made
the great idealist denounce his fellow-men. We miss the dar-
ing originality of his teacher, the lofty imagination, the
capacity for generous delusion. And yet, after reading Plato,
nothing could be so salutary for us as Aristotle’s sceptic calm.

Let us summarize our disagreement. We are bothered, at
the outset, with his insistence on logic. He thinks the syl-
logism a description of man’s way of reasoning, whereas it
merely describes man’s way of dressing up his reasoning for
the persuasion of another mind; he supposes that thought
begins with premisses and seeks their conclusions, when
actually thought begins with hypothetical conclusions and

i “If you wish me to weep you must weep first” — Horace ( Ars Poetica ) to
actors and writers.

102

THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY

seeks their justifying premisses, — and seeks them best by
the observation of particular events under the controlled
and isolated conditions of experiment. Yet how foolish we
should be to forget that two thousand years have changed
merely the incidentals of Aristotle’s logic, that Occam and
Bacon and Whewell and Mill and a hundred others have but
found spots in his sun, and that Aristotle’s creation of this
new discipline of thought, and his firm establishment of its
essential lines, remain among the lasting achievements of the
human mind.

It is again the absence of experiment and fruitful hypothe-
sis that leaves Aristotle’s natural science a mass of undigested
observations. His specialty is the collection and classifica-
tion of data ; in every field he wields his categories and produce^
catalogues. But side by side with this bent and talent for
observation goes a Platonic addiction to metaphysics; this
trips him up in every science, and inveigles him into the wild-*
est presuppositions. Here indeed was the great defect of the
Greek mind: it was not disciplined; it lacked limiting and
steadying traditions; it moved freely in an uncharted field,
and ran too readily to theories and conclusions. So Greek
philosophy leaped on to heights unreached again, while Greek
science limped behind. Our modern danger is precisely op-
posite; inductive data fall upon us from all sides like the
lava of Vesuvius; we suffocate with uncoordinated facts; our
minds are overwhelmed with sciences breeding and multiply-
ing into specialistic chaos for want of synthetic thought and
a unifying philosophy. We are all mere fragments of what
a man might be.

Aristotle’s ethics is a branch of his logic : the ideal life is like
a proper syllogism. He gives us a handbook of propriety
rather than a stimulus to improvement. An ancient critic
spoke of him as “moderate to excess.” An extremist might
call the Ethics the champion collection of platitudes in all
literature; and an Anglophobe would be consoled with the

ARISTOTLE

103

thought that Englishmen in their youth had done advance
penance for the imperialistic sins of their adult years, since
both at Cambridge and at Oxford they had been compelled
to read every word of the Nicomachean Ethics. We long
to mingle fresh green Leaves of Grass with these drier pages,
to add Whitman’s exhilarating justification of sense joy to
Aristotle’s exaltation of a purely intellectual happiness. We
wonder if this Aristotelian ideal of immoderate moderation
has had anything to do with the colorless virtue, the starched
perfection, the expressionless good form, of the British aris-
tocracy. Matthew Arnold tells us that in his time Oxford
tutors looked upon the Ethics as infallible. For three hun-
dred years this book and the Politics have formed the ruling
British mind, perhaps to great and noble achievements, but
certainly to a hard and cold efficiency. What would the re-
sult have been if the masters of the greatest of empires had
been nurtured, instead, on the holy fervor and the construc-
tive passion of the Republic?

After all, Aristotle was not quite Greek ; he had been settled
and formed before coming to Athens ; there was nothing Athe-
nian about him, nothing of the hasty and inspiriting experi-
mentalism which made Athens throb with political elan and
at last helped to subject her to a unifying despot. He re-
alized too completely the Delphic command to avoid excess:
he is so anxious to pare away extremes that at last nothing
is left. He is so fearful of disorder that he forgets to be fear-
ful of slavery; he. is so timid of uncertain change that he pre-
fers a certain changelessness that near resembles death. He
lacks that Heraclitean sense of flux which justifies the conserv-
ative in believing that all permanent change is gradual, and
justifies the radical in believing that no changelessness is
permanent. He forgets that Plato’s communism was meant
only for the elite, the unselfish and ungreedy few; and he
comes deviously to a Platonic result when he says that though
property should be private, its use should be as far as possible

104s

THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY

common. He does not see (and perhaps he could not be ex-
pected in his early day to see) that individual control of the
means of production was stimulating and salutary only when
these means were so simple as to be purchasable by any man;
and that their increasing complexity and cost lead to a dan-
gerous centralization of ownership and power, and to an arti-
ficial and finally disruptive inequality.

But after all, these are quite inessential criticisms of what
remains the most marvelous and influential system of thought
ever put together by any single mind. It may be doubted
if any other thinker has contributed so much to the enlighten-
ment of the world. Every later age has drawn upon Aristotle,
and stood upon his shoulders to see the truth. The varied and
magnificent culture of Alexandria found its scientific inspira
tion in him. His Organon played a central role in shaping
the minds of the medieval barbarians into disciplined and con-
sistent thought. The other works, translated by Nestorian
Christians into Syriac in the fifth century a. d., and thence
into Arabic and Hebrew in the tenth century, and thence into
Latin towards 1225, turned scholasticism from its eloquent
beginnings in Abelard to encyclopedic completion in Thomas
Aquinas. The Crusaders brought back more accurate Greek
copies of the philosopher’s texts; and the Greek scholars of
Constantinople brought further Aristotelian treasures with
them when, after 1453, they fled from the besieging Turks.
The works of Aristotle came to be for European philosophy
what the Bible was for theology — an almost infallible text,
with solutions for every problem. In 1215 the Papal legate
at Paris forbade teachers to lecture on his works; in 1231
Gregory IX appointed a commission to expurgate him; by
[1260 he was de rigueur in every Christian school, and ecclesi-
astical assemblies penalized deviations from his views. Chau-
cer describes his student as happy by having

At his beddes hed

Twenty bookes clothed in blake or red.

Of Aristotle and his philosophic,;

ARISTOTLE

105

and in the first circles of Hell, says Dante,

I saw the Master there of those who knoW 9
Amid the philosophic family,

By all admired, and by all reverenced;

There Plato too I saw, and Socrates,

Who stood beside him closer than the rest.

Such lines give us some inkling of the honor which a thousand
years offered to the Stagirite. Not till new instruments, ac-
cumulated observations, and patient experiments remade sci-
ence and gave irresistible weapons to Occam and Ramus, to
Roger and Francis Bacon, was the reign of Aristotle ended.
No other mind had for so long a time ruled the intellect of
mankind.

X. LATER LIFE AND DEATH

Meanwhile life had become unmanageably complicated for
our philosopher. He found him self on the one hand embroiled
with Alexander for protesting against the execution of Cal-
listhenes (a nephew of Aristotle), who had refused to worship
Alexander as a god ; and Alexander had answered the protest ,
by hinting that it was quite within his omnipotence to put even
philosophers to death. At the same time Aristotle was busy
defending Alexander among the Athenians. He preferred
Greek solidarity to city patriotism, and thought culture and
science would flourish better when petty sovereignties and dis-
putes were ended; and he saw in Alexander what Goethe was
to see in Napoleon — the philosophic unity of a chaotic and
intolerably manifold world. The Athenians, hungering for
liberty, growled at Aristotle, and became bitter when Alexan-'
der had a statue of the philosopher put up in the heart of
the hostile city. In this turmoil we get an impression of
Aristotle quite contrary to that left upon us by his Ethics:
here is a man not cold and inhumanly calm, but a fighter,
pursuing his Titanic work in a circle of enemies on every side.
The successors of Plato at the Academy, the oratorical school
of Isocrates, find the angry crowds that hung on Demosthenes*

106 THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY

acid eloquence, intrigued and clamored for his exile or b**
death.

And then, suddenly (323 b. c.), Alexander died. Athens
went wild with patriotic joy; the Macedonian party was over-
thrown, and Athenian independence was proclaimed. Anti-
pater, successor of Alexander and intimate friend of Aristotle,
marched upon the rebellious city. Most of the Macedonian
party fled. Eurymedon, a chief priest, brought in an indict-
ment against Aristotle, charging him with having taught that
prayer and sacrifice were of no avail. Aristotle saw himself
fated to be tried by juries and crowds incomparably more
hostile than those that had murdered Socrates. Very wisely,
he left the city, saying that he would not give Athens a chance
to sin a second time against philosophy. There was no cow-
ardice in this; an accused person at Athens had always the
option of preferring exile. 1 Arrived at Chalcis, Aristotle fell
ill ; Diogenes Laertius tells us that the old philosopher, in utter
disappointment with the turn of all things against him, com-
mitted suicide by drinking hemlock. 2 However induced, his
illness proved fatal; and a few months after leaving Athens
(322 b. c.) the lonely Aristotle died.

In the same year, and at the same age, sixty-two, Demos-
thenes, greatest of Alexander’s enemies, drank poison.
Within twelve months Greece had lost her greatest ruler, her
greatest orator, and her greatest philosopher. The glory that
had been Greece faded now in the dawn of the Roman sun;
and the grandeur that was Rome was the pomp of power rather
than the light of thought. Then that grandeur too de-
cayed, that little light went almost out. For a thousand years
darkness brooded over the face of Europe. All the world
awaited the resurrection of philosophy.

1 Grote, 20.

2 Grote, 22; Zeller, i, 87 note.

CHAPTER IH

FRANCIS BACON

I. FROM ARISTOTLE TO THE RENAISSANCE

W HEN Sparta blockaded and defeated Athens to-
wards the close of the fifth century b. c., political
supremacy passed from the mother of Greek philos-
ophy and art, and the vigor and independence of the Athenian
mind decayed. When, in 399 b. c., Socrates was put to death,
the soul of Athens died with him, lingering only in his proud
pupil, Plato. And when Philip of Macedon defeated the
Athenians at Chaeronea in 338 b. c., and Alexander burned the
great city of Thebes to the ground three years later, even
the ostentatious sparing of Pindar’s home could not cover up
the fact that Athenian independence, in government and in
thought, was irrevocably destroyed. The domination of Greek
philosophy by the Macedonian Aristotle mirrored the politi-
cal subjection of Greece by the virile and younger peoples of
the north.

The death of Alexander (323 b. c.) quickened this process
of decay. The boy-emperor, barbarian though he remained
after all of Aristotle’s tutoring, had yet learned to revere the
rich culture of Greece, and had dreamed of spreading that
culture through the Orient in the wake of his victorious ar-
mies. The development of Greek commerce, and the multipli-
cation of Greek trading posts throughout Asia Minor, had
provided an economic basis for the unification of this region
as part of an Hellenic empire; and Alexander hoped that
from these busy stations Greek thought, as well as Greek
goods, would radiate and conquer. But he had underrated
the inertia and resistance of the Oriental mind, and the mass

107

108

THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY

and depth of Oriental culture. It was only a youthful fancy,
after all, to suppose that so immature and unstable a civiliza-
tion as that of Greece could be imposed upon a civilization im-
measurably more widespread, and rooted in the most venerable
traditions. The quantity of Asia proved too much for the
quality of Greece. Alexander himself, in the hour of his tri-
umph, was conquered by the soul of the East; he married
(among several ladies) the daughter of Darius; he adopted
the Persian diadem and robe of state; he introduced into
Europe the Oriental notion of the divine right of kings ; and at
last he astonished a sceptic Greece by announcing, in magnifi-
cent Eastern style, that he was a god. Greece laughed; and
Alexander drank himself to death.

This subtle infusion of an Asiatic soul into the wearied
body of the master Greek was followed rapidly by the pour-
ing of Oriental cults and faiths into Greece along those very
lines of communication which the young conqueror had opened
up ; the broken dykes let in the ocean of Eastern thought upon
the lowlands of the still adolescent European mind. The mys-
tic and superstitious faiths which had taken root among the
poorer people of Hellas were reinforced and spread about;
and the Oriental spirit of apathy and resignation found a
ready soil in decadent and despondent Greece. The introduc-
tion of the Stoic philosophy into Athens by the Phoenician
merchant Zeno (about 310 b. c.) was but one of a multitude
of Oriental infiltrations. Both Stoicism and Epicureanism — *
the apathetic acceptance of defeat, and the effort to forget
defeat in the arms of pleasure — were theories as to how one
might yet be happy though subjugated or enslaved; precisely
as the pessimistic Oriental stoicism of Schopenhauer and the
despondent epicureanism of Renan were in the nineteenth cen-
tury the symbols of a shattered Revolution and a broken
France.

Not that these natural antitheses of ethical theory were quite
new to Greece. One finds them in the gloomy Heraclitus and
the “laughing philosopher” Democritus ; and one sees the pu-

FRANCIS BACON

109

pils of Socrates dividing into Cynics and Cyrenaics under the
lead of Antisthenes and Aristippus, and extolling, the one
school apathy, the other happiness. Yet these were even then
almost exotic modes of thought: imperial Athens did not take
to them. But when Greece had seen Chaeronea in blood and
Thebes in ashes, it listened to Diogenes ; and when the glory
had departed from Athens she was ripe for Zeno and Epi-
curus. 1

Zeno built his philosophy of apatheia on a determinism
which a later Stoic, Chrysippus, found it hard to distinguish
from Oriental fatalism. When Zeno, who did not believe in
slavery, was beating his slave for some offense, the slave
pleaded, in mitigation, that by his master’s philosophy he had
been destined from all eternity to commit this fault ; to which
Zeno replied, with the calm of a sage, that on the same philos-
ophy he, Zeno, had been destined to beat him for it. As
Schopenhauer deemed it useless for the individual will to fight
the universal will, so the Stoic argued that philosophic indif-
ference was the only reasonable attitude to a life in which the
struggle for existence is so unfairly doomed to inevitable de-
feat. If victory is quite impossible it should be scorned. The
secret of peace is not to make our achievements equal to our de-
sires, but to lower our desires to the level of our achievements.
“If what you have seems insufficient to you,” said the Roman
Stoic Seneca (d. 65 a. d.), “then, though you possess the
world, you will yet be miserable.”

Such a principle cried out to heaven for its opposite, and
Epicurus, though himself as Stoic in life as Zeno, supplied it.
Epicurus, says Fenelon, 2 “bought a fair garden, which he
tilled himself. There it was he set up his school, and there
he lived a gentle and agreeable life with his disciples, whom he
taught as he walked and worked. . . . He was gentle and af-
fable to all men . . . He held there was nothing nobler than

iThe table on pages 110-111 indicates approximately the main lines of
philosophical development in Europe and America.

2 Quoted as motto on the title-page of Anatole France’s Garden of Epicwnts*

TABLE OF PHILOSOPHIC AFFILIATIONS

MarcusAurelius

I9M80AD

THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY

112

to apply one’s self to philosophy.” His starting point is a
conviction that apathy is impossible, and that pleasure — -
though not necessarily sensual pleasure — is the only conceiv-
able, and quite legitimate, end of life and action. “Nature
leads every organism to prefer its own good to every other
good” ; — even the Stoic finds a subtle pleasure in renunciation.
“We must not avoid pleasures, but we must select them.”
Epicurus, then, is no epicurean; he exalts the joys of intellect
rather than those of sense ; he warns against pleasures that ex-
cite and disturb the soul which they should rather quiet and
appease. In the end he proposes to seek not pleasure in its
usual sense, but ataraxia — tranquillity, equanimity, repose
of mind ; all of which trembles on the verge of Zeno’s “apathy.”

The Romans, coming to despoil Hellas in 146 b. c., found
these rival schools dividing the philosophic field; and having
neither leisure nor subtlety for speculation themselves, brought
back these philosophies with their other spoils to Rome. Great
organizers, as much as inevitable slaves, tend to stoic moods:
it is difficult to be either master or servant if one is sensitive.
So such philosophy as Rome had was mostly of Zeno’s school,
whether in Marcus Aurelius the emperor or in Epictetus the
slave; and even Lucretius talked epicureanism stoically (like
Heine’s Englishman taking his pleasures sadly), and con-
cluded his stem gospel of pleasure by committing suicide,
His noble epic “On the Nature of Things,” 1 follows Epicurus
in damning pleasure with faint praise. Almost contemporary
with Caesar and Pompey, he lived in the midst of turmoil and
alarms; his nervous pen is forever inditing prayers to tran-
quillity and peace. One pictures him as a timid soul whose
youth had been darkened with religious fears; for he never
tires of telling his readers that there is no hell, except here,
and that there are no gods except gentlemanly ones who live
in a garden of Epicurus in the clouds, and never intrude in
the affairs of men. To the rising cult of heaven and hell

i Professor Shotwell {Introduction to the History of History) calls it “th6
most marvelous performance in all antique literature.”

FRANCIS BACON

IIS

among the people of Rome he opposes a ruthless materialism.
Soul and mind are evolved with the body, grow with its growth,
ail with its ailments, and die with its death. Nothing exists
but atoms, space, and law ; and the law of laws is that of evolu-
tion and dissolution everywhere.

No single thing abides, but all things flow.

Fragment to fragment dings ; the things thus grow
Until we know and name them. By degrees
They melt, and are no more the things we know.

Globed from the atoms, falling slow or swift
I see the suns, I see the systems lift

Their forms; and even the systems and their suns
Shall go back slowly to the eternal drift.

Thou too, O Earth — thine empires, lands and seas —
Least, with thy stars, of all the galaxies,

Globed from the drift like these, like these thou too
Shalt go. Thou art going, hour by hour, like these.

Nothing abides. Thy seas in delicate haze
Go off ; those mooned sands forsake their place ;

And where they are shall other seas in turn
Mow with their scythes of whiteness other bays . 1

To astronomical evolution and dissolution add the origin
and elimination of species.

Many monsters too the earth of old tried to produce,
things of strange face and limbs; . . . some without feet,
some without hands, some without mouth, some without eyes.

• . . Every other monster ... of this kind earth would
produce, but in vain ; for nature set a ban on their increase,
they could not reach the coveted flower of age, nor find
food, nor be united in marriage; . . . and many races of
living things must then have died out and been unable to
beget and continue their breed. For in the case of all
things which you see breathing the breath of life, either

£ Paraphrase by Mallock: Lucretius on Life and Death, pp. 15-16.

114

THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY

craft or courage or speed has from the beginning of its
existence protected and preserved each particular race. ...
Those to whom nature has granted none of these qualities
would lie exposed as a prey and booty to others, until
nature brought their kind to extinction . 1

Nations, too, like individuals, slowly grow and surely die:
“some nations wax, others wane, and in a brief space the races
of living things are changed, and like runners hand over the
lamp of life.” In the face of warfare and inevitable death,
there is no wisdom but in ataraxia , — “to look on all things with
a mind at peace.” Here, clearly, the old pagan joy of life
is gone, and an almost exotic spirit touches a broken lyre.
History, which is nothing if not humorous, was never so face-
tious as when she gave to this abstemious and epic pessimist the
name of Epicurean.

And if this is the spirit of the follower of Epicurus, imagine
the exhilarating optimism of explicit Stoics like Aurelius or
Epictetus. Nothing in all literature is so depressing as the
“Dissertations” of the slave, unless it be the “Meditations” of
the emperor. “Seek not to have things happen as you choose
them, but rather choose that they should happen as they do ;
and you shall live prosperously.” 2 No doubt one can in this
manner dictate the future, and play royal highness to the uni-
verse. Story has it that Epictetus 5 master, who treated him
with consistent cruelty, one day took to twisting Epictetus’
leg to pass the time away. “If you go on,” said Epictetus
calmly, “you will break my leg.” The master went on, and
the leg was broken. “Did I not tell you,” Epictetus observed
mildly, “that you would break my leg?” 3 Yet there is a cer-
tain mystic nobility in this philosophy, as in the quiet courage
of some Dostoievskian pacifist. “Never in any case say, I
have lost such a thing; but, I have returned it. Is thy child
dead? — it is returned. Is thy wife dead? — she is returned.

1 V., 830 f., translation by Munro.

2 Enchiridion and Dissertations of Epictetus; ed. Rolleston; p. 81.

*Ibid., xxxvi.

FRANCIS BACON

115

Art thou deprived of thy estate?— is not this also returned?” 1
In such passages we feel the proximity of Christianity and its
dauntless martyrs ; indeed were not the Christian ethic of self-
denial, the Christian political ideal of an almost communistic
brotherhood of man, and the Christian eschatology of the final
conflagration of all the world, fragments of Stoic doctrine
floating on the stream of thought? In Epictetus the Greco-
Roman soul has lost its paganism, and is ready for a new faith.
His book had the distinction of being adopted as a religious
manual by the early Christian Church. From these “Disser-
tations” and Aurelius’ “Meditations” there is but a step to
“The Imitation of Christ.”

Meanwhile the historical background was melting into newer
scenes. There is a remarkable passage in Lucretius 2 which
describes the decay of agriculture in the Roman state, and
attributes it to the exhaustion of the soil. Whatever the cause,
the wealth of Rome passed into poverty, the organization into
disintegration, the power and pride into decadence and apathy.
Cities faded back into the undistinguished hinterland; the
roads fell into disrepair and no longer hummed with trade;
the small families of the educated Romans were outbred by
the vigorous and untutored German stocks that crept, year
after year, across the frontier; pagan culture yielded to Ori-
ental cults ; and almost imperceptibly the Empire passed into
the Papacy.

The Church, supported in its earlier centuries by the em-
perors whose powers it gradually absorbed, grew rapidly in
numbers, wealth, and range of influence. By the thirteenth
century it owned one-third of the soil of Europe , 3 and its cof-
fers bulged with donations of rich and poor. For a thousand
years it united, with the magic of an unvarying creed, most
of the peoples of a continent ; never before or since was organi-
zation so widespread or so pacific. But this unity demanded,

ilbid., 86.

2 II, 1170. This oldest is also the latest theory of the decline of Romo; of.
Simkhovitch : Toward the Understanding of Jesus; New* York, 1921.

* Robinson and Beard: Outlines of European History; Boston, 1914, i, 443.

116

THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY

as the Church thought, a common faith exalted by supernat-
ural sanctions beyond the changes and corrosions of time;
therefore dogma, definite and defined, was cast like a shell oyer
the adolescent mind of medieval Europe. It was within this
shell that Scholastic philosophy moved narrowly from faith
to reason and back again, in a baffling circuit of uncriticized
assumptions and pre-ordained conclusions. In the thirteenth
century all Christendom was startled and stimulated by Arabic
and Jewish translations of Aristotle; but the power of the
Church was still adequate to secure, through Thomas Aquinas
and others, the transmogrification of Aristotle into a medieval
theologian. The result was subtlety, but not wisdom. “The
wit and mind of man,” as Bacon put it, “if it work upon the
matter, worketh according to the stuff, and is limited thereby;
but if it work upon itself, as the spider worketh his web, then
it is endless, and bringeth forth indeed cobwebs of learning,
admirable for the fineness of thread and work, but of no sub-
stance or profit.” Sooner or later the intellect of Europe
would burst out of this shell.

After a thousand years of tillage, the soil bloomed again;
goods were multiplied into a surplus that compelled trade;
and trade at its cross-roads built again great cities wherein
men might cooperate to nourish culture and rebuild civiliza-
tion. The Crusades opened the routes to the East, and let
in a stream of luxuries and heresies that doomed asceticism
and dogma. Paper now came cheaply from Egypt, replacing
the costly parchment that had made learning the monopoly of
priests ; printing, which had long awaited an inexpensive me-
dium, broke out like a liberated explosive, and spread its de-
structive and clarifying influence everywhere. Brave mar-
iners armed now with compasses, ventured out into the wilder-
ness of the sea, and conquered man’s ignorance of the earth;
patient observers, armed with telescopes, ventured out beyond
the confines of dogma, and conquered man’s ignorance of the
sky. Here and there, in universities and monasteries and hid-

FRANCIS BACON

TV>

den retreats, men ceased to dispute and began to search; dev-
iously, out of the effort to change baser metal into gold, al-
chemy was transmuted into chemistry; out of astrology men
groped their way with timid boldness to astronomy; and out
of the fables of speaking animals came the science of zoology.
The awakening began with Roger Bacon (d. 1294) ; it grew
with the limitless Leonardo (1452-1519) ; it reached its ful-
ness in the astronomy of Copernicus (1473—1543) and Galileo
(1564— 1642), in the researches of Gilbert (1544—1603) in
magnetism and electricity, of Vesalius (1514—1564) in anat-
omy, and of Harvey (1578—1657) on the circulation of the
blood. As knowledge grew, fear decreased; men thought less
of worshiping the unknown, and more of overcoming it.
Every vital spirit was lifted up with a new confidence ; barriers
were broken down ; there was no bound now to what man might
do. “But that little vessels, like the celestial bodies, should
sail round the whole globe, is the happiness of our age. These
times may justly use plus ultra ”• — more beyond — “where the
ancients used non plus ultra ." 1 It was an age of achievement,
hope and vigor; of new beginnings and enterprises in every
field; an age that waited for a voice, some synthetic soul
to sum up its spirit and resolve. It was Francis Bacon,
“the most powerful mind of modern times,” 2 who “rang the
bell that called the wits together,” and announced that Europe
had come of age.

H. THE POLITICAL CAREER OP PRANCIS BACON

Bacon was born on January 22, 1561, at York House, Lon-
don, the residence of his father, Sir Nicholas Bacon, who for
the first twenty years of Elizabeth’s reign had been Keeper of

1 Bacon: The Advancement of Learning ; bk. ii, ch, 10. A medieval motto
showed a ship turning back at Gibraltar into the Mediterranean, with thb
inscription, Non plus ultra — go no farther.

2 E. J. Payne in The Cambridge Modern History , i, 65.

THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY

118

the Great Seal. “The fame of the father,” says Macaulay,
“has been thrown into the shade by that of the son. But Sir
Nicholas was no ordinary man.” 1 It is as one might have sus-
pected; for genius is an apex, to which a family builds itself
through talent, and through talent in the genius’s offspring
subsides again towards the mediocrity of man. Bacon’s
mother was Lady Anne Cooke, sister-in-law of Sir William
Cecil, Lord Burghley, who was Elizabeth’s Lord Treasurer,
and one of the most powerful men in England. Her father
had been chief tutor of King Edward VI; she herself was a
linguist and a theologian, and thought nothing of correspond-
ing in Greek with bishops. She made herself instructress of
her *on, and spared no pains in his education.

But the real nurse of Bacon’s greatness was Elizabethan
England, the greatest age of the most powerful of modern
nations. The discovery of America had diverted trade from
the Mediterranean to the Atlantic, had raised the Atlantic na-
tions— Spain and France and Holland and England — to that
commercial and financial supremacy which had been Italy’s
when half of Europe had made her its port of entry and exit
in the Eastern trade; and with this change the Renaissance
had passed from Florence and Rome and Milan and Venice
to Madrid and Paris and Amsterdam and London. After the
destruction of the Spanish naval power in 1588, the commerce
of England spread over every sea, her towns throve with do-
mestic industry, her sailors circumnavigated the globe and her
captains won America. Her literature blossomed into Spen-
ser’s poetry and Sidney’s prose; her stage throbbed with the
dramas of Shakespeare and Marlowe and Ben Jonson and a
hundred vigorous pens. No man could fail to flourish in such
a time and country, if there was seed in him at all.

At the age of twelve Bacon was sent to Trinity College, Cam-
bridge. He stayed there three years, and left it with a strong
dislike of its texts and methods, a confirmed hostility to the
cult of Aristotle, and a resolve to set philosophy into a more

l Essays : New York, I860: iii, 342,

FRANCIS BACON

119

fertile path, to turn it from scholastic disputation to the illu-
mination and increase of human good. Though still a lad of
sixteen, he was offered an appointment to the staff of the
English ambassador in France; and after careful casting up
of pros and cons , he accepted. In the Proem to The Interpret
tation of Nature , he discusses this fateful decision that turned
him from philosophy to politics. It is an indispensable pas-
sage:

Whereas, I believed myself born for the service of mankind,
and reckoned the care of the common weal to be among those
duties that are of public right, open to all alike, even as the
waters and the air, I therefore asked myself what could
most advantage mankind, and for the performance of what
tasks I seemed to be shaped by nature. But when I searched,

I found no work so meritorious as the discovery and develop-
ment of the arts and inventions that tend to civilize the life
of man. . . . Above all, if any man could succeed — not
merely in bringing to light some one particular invention,
however useful — but in kindling in nature a luminary which
would, at its first rising, shed some light on the present
limits and borders of human discoveries, and which after-
wards, as it rose still higher, would reveal and bring into
clear view every nook and cranny of darkness, it seemed to
me that such a discoverer would deserve to be called the true
Extender of the Kingdom of Man over the universe, the
Champion of human liberty, and the Exterminator of the
necessities that now keep men in bondage. Moreover, I
found in my own nature a special adaptation for the contem-
plation of truth. For I had a mind at once versatile enough
for that most important object — I mean the recognition
of similitudes — and at the same time sufficiently steady and
concentrated for the observation of subtle shades of dif-
ference. I possessed a passion for research, a power of sus-
pending judgment with patience, of meditating with pleasure,
of assenting with caution, of correcting false impressions
with readiness, and of arranging my thoughts with scrupu-
lous pains. I had no hankering after novelty, no blind ad-
miration for antiquity. Imposture in every shape I utterly

120

THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY

detested. For all these reasons I considered that my nature
and disposition had, as it were, a kind of kinship and con-
nection with truth.

But my birth, my rearing and education, had all pointed,
not toward philosophy, but towards politics : I had been, as
it were, imbued in politics from childhood. And as is
not unfrequently the case with young men, I was sometimes
shaken in my mind by opinions. I also thought that my
duty towards my country had special claims upon me, such
as could not be urged by other duties of life. Lastly, I
conceived the hope that, if I held some honorable office in
the state, I might have secure helps and supports to aid
my labors, with a view to the accomplishment of my destined
task. With these motives I applied myself to politics. 1

Sir Nicholas Bacon died suddenly in 1579. He had in^
tended to provide Francis with an estate; but death over-
reached his plans, and the young diplomat, called hurriedly
Jo London, saw himself, at the age of eighteen, fatherless and
penniless. He had become accustomed to most of the luxuries
of the age, and he found it hard to reconcile himself now
to a forced simplicity of life. He took up the practice of
law, while he importuned his influential relatives to advance
him to some political office which would liberate him from
economic worry. His almost begging letters had small re-
sult, considering the grace and vigor of their style, and the
proved ability of their author. Perhaps it was because Bacon
did not underrate this ability, and looked upon position as
his due, that Burghley failed to make the desired response;
and perhaps, also, these letters protested too much the past,
present and future loyalty of the writer to the honorable Lord :
in politics, as in love, it does not do to give one’s self wholly;
one should at all times give, but at no time all. Gratitude
is nourished with expectation.

Eventually, Bacon climbed without being lifted from above ;
but every step cost him many years. In 1583 he was elected

l Translation by Abbott: Francis Bacon ; London, 1885; p. 37.

FRANCIS BACON

121

to Parliament for Taunton ; and his constituents liked him so
well that they returned him to his seat in election after elec-
tion. He had a terse and vivid eloquence in debate, and was
an orator without oratory. “No man,” said Ben Jonson,
“ever spoke more neatly, more (com) pressedly, more weightily,
or suffered less emptiness, less idleness in what he uttered. No
member of his speech but consisted of its own graces. His
hearers could not cough or look aside from him without loss.
He commanded where he spoke. . . . No man had their affec-
tions more in his power. The fear of every man that heard
him was lest that he should make an end.” 1 Enviable orator !

One powerful friend was generous to him — that handsome
Earl of Essex whom Elizabeth loved unsuccessfully, and so
learned to hate. In 1595 Essex, to atone for his failure in
securing a political post for Bacon, presented him with a
pretty estate at Twickenham. It was a magnificent gift,
which one might presume would bind Bacon to Essex for
life ; but it did not. A few years later Essex organized a con-
spiracy to imprison Elizabeth and select her successor to th«
throne. Bacon wrote letter after letter to his benefactor, pro-
testing against this treason ; and when Essex persisted, Bacon
warned him that he would put loyalty to his Queen above even
gratitude to his friend. Essex made his effort, failed, and
was arrested. Bacon pled with the Queen in his behalf so in-
cessantly that at last she bade him “speak of any other sub-
ject.” When Essex, temporarily freed, gathered armed forces
about him, marched into London, and tried to rouse its popu-
lace to revolution, Bacon turned against him angrily. Mean-
while he had been given a place in the prosecuting office
of the realm; and when Essex, again arrested, was tried for
treason, Bacon took active part in the prosecution of the man
who had been his unstinting friend. 2

1 Nichol: Francis Bacon; Edinburgh, 1907 ; i, 37.

2 Hundreds of volumes have been written on this aspect of Bacon’s career.
The case against Bacon, as “the wisest and meanest of mankind” (so Pope
called him), will be found in Macaulay’s essay, and more circumstantially
in Abbott’s Francis Bacon ; these would apply to him his own words:

m THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY

Essex was found guilty, and was put to death. Bacon’fc
part in the trial made him for a while unpopular ; and from
this time on he lived in the midst of enemies watching for a
chance to destroy him. His insatiable ambition left him no
rest ; he was ever discontent, and always a year or so ahead of
his income. He was lavish in his expenditures; display was
to him a part of policy. When, at the age of forty-five, he
married, the pompous and costly ceremony made a great gap
in the dowry which had constituted one of the lady’s attrac-
tions. In 1598 he was arrested for debt. Nevertheless, he
continued to advance. His varied ability and almost endless
knowledge made him a valuable member of every important
committee; gradually higher offices were opened to him: in
1606 he was made Solicitor-General; in 1613 he became
Attorney-General; in 1618, at the age of fifty-seven, he was
at last Lord Chancellor*

m. THE ESSAYS 1

His elevation seemed to realize Plato’s dreams of a
philosopher-king. For, step by step with his climb to political
power, Bacon had been mounting the summits of philosophy.
It is almost incredible that the vast learning and literary
achievements of this man were but the incidents and diversions
of a turbulent political career. It was his motto that one lived
best by the hidden life — bene vixit qui bene, latuit. He could
not quite make up his mind whether he liked more the con-
templative or the active life. His hope was to be philosopher
and statesman, too, like Seneca ; though he suspected that this

<f Wisdom for a man’s self is the wisdom of rats, that will be sure to leave
a house somewhat before it falls” (Essay “Of Wisdom for a Man’s Self”).
The case for Bacon is given in Spedding’s Life and Times of Francis Bacon ,
and in his Evenings with a Reviewer (a detailed reply to Macaulay). In
medio veritas.

1 The author has thought it better in this section to make no attempt
to concentrate further the already compact thought of Bacon, and has preferred
to put the philosopher’s wisdom in his own incomparable English rather than to
take probably greater space to say the same things with less clarity, beauty,
and force.

FRANCIS BACON

123

double direction of his life would shorten his reach and lessen
his attainment. “It is hard to say,” he writes, 1 “whether mix-
ture of contemplations with an active life, or retiring wholly
to contemplations, do disable or hinder the mind more.” He
felt that studies could not be either end or wisdom in them-
selves, and that knowledge unapplied in action was a pale
academic vanity. “To spend too much time in studies is
sloth; to use them too much for ornament is affectation; to
make judgment wholly by their rules is the humor of a scholar.
. . . Crafty men condemn studies, simple men admire them,
and wise men use them ; for they teach not their own use ; but
that is a wisdom without them, and above them, won by ob-
servation.” 2 Here is a new note, which marks the end of
scholasticism — i. e., the divorce of knowledge from use and
observation — and places that emphasis on experience and
results which distinguishes English philosophy, and culmi-
nates in pragmatism. Not that Bacon for a moment ceased
to love books and meditation ; in words reminiscent of Socrates
he writes, “without philosophy I care not to live”; 3 and he
describes himself as after all “a man naturally fitted rather
for literature than for anything else, and borne by some
destiny, against the inclination of his genius” (i. e., charac-
ter), “into active life.” 4 Almost his first publication was
called “The Praise of Knowledge” (1592) ; its enthusiasm
for philosophy compels quotation:

My praise shall be dedicate to the mind itself. The mind
is the man, and knowledge mind; a man is but what he
knoweth. . . . Are not the pleasures of the affections greater
than the pleasures of the senses, and are not the pleasures
of the intellect greater than the pleasures of the affections?

Is not that only a true and natural pleasure whereof there is
no satiety? Is not that knowledge alone that doth clear
the mind of all perturbations? How many things be there

i Valerius Terminus, ad fin,

* “Of Studies.”

©Dedication of Wisdom of the Ancients •

4De Augmentis, viii, 3.

THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY

124

which we imagine are not? How many things do we esteem
and value more than they are? These vain imaginations,
these ill-proportioned estimations, these be the clouds of
error that turn into the storms of perturbations. Is there
then any such happiness as for a man’s mind to be raised
above the confusion of things, where he may have a respect
of the order of nature and the error of men? Is there but
a view only of delight and not of discovery? Of content-
ment and not of benefit? Shall we not discern as well the
riches of nature’s warehouse as the beauty of her shop? Is
truth barren? Shall we not thereby be able to produce
worthy effects, and to endow the life of man with infinite
commodities?

His finest literary product, the Essays (1597-1623), show
him still torn between these two loves, for politics and for
philosophy. In the “Essay of Honor and Reputation” he
gives all the degrees of honor to political and military achieve-
ments, none to the literary or the philosophical. But in the
essay “Of Truth” he writes : “The inquiry of truth, which is
the love-making or wooing of it; the knowledge of truth,
which is the praise of it ; and the belief of truth, which is the
enjoying of it, is the sovereign good of human natures.”
In books “we converse with the wise, as in action with fools.”
That is, if we know how to select our books. “Some books
are to be tasted,” reads a famous passage, “others to be
swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested”; all
these groups forming, no doubt, an infinitesimal portion of
the oceans and cataracts of ink in which the world is daily
bathed and poisoned and drowned.

Surely the Essays must be numbered among the few books
that deserve to be chewed and digested. Rarely shall you
find so much meat, so admirably dressed and flavored, in so
small a dish. Bacon abhors padding, and disdains to waste
a word; he offers us infinite riches in a little phrase; each of
these essays gives in a page or two the distilled subtlety of a
master mind on a major issue of life. It is difficult to sa,y

FRANCIS BACON

125

whether the matter or the manner more excels; for here is
language as supreme in prose as Shakespeare’s is in verse.
It is a style lille sturdy Tacitus’, compact yet polished ; and
indeed some of its conciseness is due to the skillful adaptation
of Latin idiom and phrase. But its wealth of metaphor is
characteristically Elizabethan, and reflects the exuberance of
the Renaissance; no man in English literature is so fertile in
pregnant and pithy comparisons. Their lavish array is the
one defect of Bacon’s style: the endless metaphors and
allegories and allusions fall like whips upon our nerves and
tire us out at last. The Essays are like rich and heavy food,
which cannot be digested in large quantities at once; but
taken four or five at a time they are the finest intellectual
nourishment in English . 1

What shall we extract from this extracted wisdom? Per-
haps the best starting point, and the most arresting deviation
from the fashions of medieval philosophy, is Bacon’s frank ac-
ceptance of the Epicurean ethic. “That philosophical pro-
gression, ‘Use not that you may not wish, wish not that you
may not fear,’ seems an indication of a weak, diffident and
timorous mind. And indeed most doctrines of the philoso-
phers appear to be too distrustful, and to take more care of
mankind than the nature of the thing requires. Thus they
increase the fears of death by the remedies they bring against
it; for whilst they make the life of man little more than a
preparation and discipline for death, it is impossible but the
enemy must appear terrible when there is no end of the de-
fense to be made against him.” 2 Nothing could be so in-
jurious to health as the Stoic repression of desire ; what is the
use of prolonging a life which apathy has turned into pre-
mature death? And besides, it is an impossible philosophy;
for instinct will out. “Nature is often hidden; sometimes
overcome; seldom extinguished. Force maketh nature more

i The author’s preference is for Essays 2, 7, 8, 11, 12, 16, 18, 20, 27, 29, 38,
39, 42, 46, 48, 50, 52, 54.

2Adv. of L., vii, 2. Certain passages from this book atre brought in here,
to avoid a repetition of topics under each work.

126

THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY

violent in the return; doctrine and discourse maketh nature
less importune; but custom only doth alter or subdue na-
ture. . . . But let not a man trust his victory over his nature
too far; for nature will lay buried a great time, and yet
revive upon the occasion or temptation. Like as it was with
iEsop’s damsel, turned from a cat to a woman, who sat very
demurely at the board’s end, till a mouse ran before her.
Therefore let a man either avoid the occasion altogether, or
put himself often to it, that he may be little moved with it.” 1
Indeed Bacon thinks the body should be inured to excesses
as well as to restraint ; else even a moment of unrestraint may
ruin it. (So one accustomed to the purest and most digestible
foods is easily upset when forgetfulness or necessity diverts
him from perfection.) Yet “variety of delights rather than
surfeit of them” ; for “strength of nature in youth passeth over
many excesses which are owing a man till his age ” ; 2 a man’s
maturity pays the price of his youth. One royal road to
health is a garden; Bacon agrees with the author of Genesis
that “God Almighty first planted a garden” ; and with Voltaire
that we must cultivate our back yards.

The moral philosophy of the Essays smacks rather of
Machiavelli than of the Christianity to which Bacon made
so many astute obeisances. “We are beholden to Machiavel,
and writers of that kind, who openly and unmasked declare
what men do in fact, and not what they ought to do ; for it is
impossible to join the wisdom of the serpent and the in-
nocence of the dove, without a previous knowledge of the
nature of evil; as, without this, virtue lies exposed and un-
guarded.” 3 “The Italians have an ungracious proverb,
Tanto buon che val niente ” — so good that he is good for
nothing . 4 Bacon accords his preaching with his practice, and
advises a judicious mixture of dissimulation with honesty,
like an alloy that will make the purer but softer metal capable

i“Of Nature in Men.”

2 “Of Regiment of Health ”

*Adv. of L., xii, 2.

* “Of Goodness.”

FRANCIS BACON

of longer life. He wants a full and varied career, giving
acquaintance with everything that can broaden, deepen,
strengthen or sharpen the mind. He does not admire the
merely contemplative life; like Goethe he scorns knowledge
that does not lead to action: “men ought to know that in the
theatre of human life it is only for Gods and angels to bo
spectators.” 1

His religion is patriotically like the King’s. Though he
was more than once accused of atheism, and the whole trend
of his philosophy is secular and rationalistic, he makes an elo-
quent and apparently sincere disclaimer of unbelief. “I
had rather believe all the fables in the Legend, and the Tal-
mud and the Alcoran, than that this universal frame is with-
out a mind. ... A little philosophy inclineth a man’s mind
to atheism; but depth in philosophy bringeth men’s minds
about to religion. For while the mind of man looketh upon
second causes scattered, it may sometimes rest in them and
go no further ; but when it beholdeth the chain of them, con-
federate and linked together, it must needs fly to Providence
and Deity.” 2 Religious indifference is due to a multiplicity
of factions. “The causes of atheism are, divisions in re-
ligion, if they be many; for any one division addeth zeal to
both sides; but many divisions introduce atheism. . . . And
lastly, learned times, especially with peace and prosperity;
for troubles and adversities do more bow men’s minds to
religion.” 8

But Bacon’s value lies less in theology and ethics than in
psychology. He is an undeceivable analyst of human nature,
and sends his shaft into every heart. On the stalest subject
in the world he is refreshingly original. “A married man is
seven years older in his thoughts the first day .” 4 “It is
often seen that bad husbands have good wives.” (Bacon
was an exception.) “A single life doth well with churchmen,

1 Adv, of L, f vil, 1.

2 “Of Atheism.”

8 Ibid,

? letter to Lord Burghley, 1606.

J28 THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY

for charity will hardly water the ground where it must first fill
a pool. . . . He that hath wife and children hath given
hostages to fortune ; for they are impediments to great enters
prises, either of virtue or mischief.” 1 Bacon seems to have
worked too hard to have had time for love, and perhaps he
never quite felt it to its depth. “It is a strange thing to
note the excess of this passion. . . . There was never proud
man thought so absurdly well of himself as the lover doth
of the person beloved. . . .You may observe that amongst all
the great and worthy persons (whereof the memory remaineth
either ancient or recent), there is not one that hath been
transported to the mad degree of love ; which shows that great
spirits and great business do keep out this weak passion.” 2
He values friendship more than love, though of friendship
too he can be sceptical. “There is little friendship in the
world, and least of all between equals, which was wont to be
magnified. That that is, is between superior and inferior,
whose fortunes may comprehend the one the other. ... A
principal fruit of friendship is the ease and discharge of the
fullness and swellings of the heart, which passions of all kinds
do cause and induce.” A friend is an ear. “Those that
want friends to open themselves unto are cannibals of their
own hearts. . . . Whoever hath his mind fraught with many
thoughts, his wits and understanding do clarify and break up
in the communicating and discoursing with another ; he tosseth
his thoughts more easily; he marshaleth them more orderly;
he seeth how they look when they are turned into words;
finally, he waxeth wiser than himself; and that more by one
hour’s discourse than by a day’s meditation.” 3

In the essay “Of Youth and Age” he puts a book into a
paragraph. “Young men are fitter to invent than to judge,
fitter for execution than for counsel, and fitter for new proj-

i“Of Marriage and Single Life.” Contrast the more pleasing phrase Of
Shakespeare, that “Love gives to every power a double power.”

2 “Of Love.”

8 “Of Followers and Friends”; “Of Friendship.”

FRANCIS BACON

129

ects than for settled business; for the experience of age in
things that fall within the compass of it, directeth them ; but
in new things abuseth them, . . • Young men, in the conduct
and management of actions, embrace more than they can hold,
stir more than they can quiet ; fly to the end without considera-
tion of the means and degrees; pursue absurdly some few
principles which they have chanced upon ; care not to” (i. e.,
how they) “innovate, which draws unknown inconveniences.
* . . Men of age object too much, consult too long, adventure
too little, repent too soon, and seldom drive business home to
the full period, but content themselves with a mediocrity of
success. Certainly it is good to compel employments of
both, . . . because the virtues of either may correct the de-
fects of both.” He thinks, nevertheless, that youth and child-
hood may get too great liberty, and so grow disordered and
lax. “Let parents choose betimes the vocations and courses
they mean their children should take, for then they are most
flexible; and let them not too much apply themselves to the
disposition of their children, as thinking they will take best
to that which they have most mind to. It is true that, if the
affections or aptness of the children be extraordinary, then
it is good not to cross it; but generally the precept” of the
Pythagoreans “is good, Optimum lege , suave et facile illud
faciet consuetudo ” — choose the best; custom will make it
pleasant and easy . 1 For “custom is the principal magistrate
of man’s life.” 2

The politics of the Essays preach a conservatism
natural in one who aspired to rule. Bacon wants a strong
central power. Monarchy is the best form of government;
and usually the efficiency of a state varies with the concentra-
tion of power. “There be three points of business” in gov-
ernment: “the preparation; the debate or examination; and
the perfection” (or execution). “Whereof, if you look fo*

1 “Of Parents and Children.”

2 “Of Custom.”

130

THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY

dispatch, let the middle only be the work of many, and thfe
first and last the work of a few.” 1 He is an outspoken
militarist; he deplores the growth of industry as unfitting
men for war, and bewails long peace as lulling the warrior
in man. Nevertheless, he recognizes the importance of raw
materials: “Solon said well to Croesus (when in osten-
tation Croesus showed him his gold), ‘Sir, if any other come
that hath better iron than you, he will be master of all this
gold.” 2

Like Aristotle, he has some advice on avoiding revolutions.
“The surest way to prevent seditions ... is to take away the
matter of them; for if there be fuel prepared, it is hard to
tell whence the spark shall come that shall set it on fire. . . .
Neither doth it follow that the suppressing of fames” (i. e.,
discussion) “with too much severity should be a remedy of
troubles; for the despising of them many times checks them
best, and the going about to stop them but makes a wonder
long-lived. . . . The matter of sedition is of two kinds : much
poverty and much discontentment. . . . The causes and mo-
tives of seditions are, innovation in religion; taxes; alteration
of laws and customs; breaking of privileges; general oppres-
sion; advancement of unworthy persons, strangers; dearths;
disbanded soldiers; factions grown desperate; and whatsoever
in offending a people joineth them in a common cause.” The
cue of every leader, of course, is to divide his enemies and to
unite his friends. “Generally, the dividing and breaking of
all factions . . . that are adverse to the state, and setting
them at a distance, or at least distrust, among themselves, is
not one of the worst remedies; for it is a desperate case,
if those that hold with the proceeding of the state be full of
discord and faction, and those that are against it be entire
and united.” 8 A better recipe for the avoidance of revolutions
is an equitable distribution of wealth: “Money is like muck,

i“Of Dispatch.”

2 “Of the True Greatness of Kingdoms.”

« “Of Seditions and Troubles.”

FRANCIS BACON

131

not good unless it be spread.” 1 But this does not mean so-
cialism, or even democracy; Bacon distrusts the people, who
were in his day quite without access to education ; “the lowest
of all flatteries is the flattery of the common people ” ; 2 and
“Phocion took it right, who, being applauded by the multitude,
asked, What had he done amiss ?” 3 What Bacon wants is
first a yeomanry of owning farmers; then an aristocracy for
administration; and above all a philosopher-king. “It is al-
most without instance that any government was unprosperous
under learned governors.” 4 He mentions Seneca, Antoninus
Pius and Aurelius ; it was his hope that to their names posterity
would add his own.

IV. THE GREAT RECONSTRUCTION

Unconsciously, in the midst of his triumphs, his heart was
with philosophy. It had been his nurse in youth, it was his
companion in office, it was to be his consolation in prison
and disgrace. He lamented the ill-repute into which, he
thought, philosophy had fallen, and blamed an arid scholasti-
cism. “People are very apt to contemn truth, on account of
the controversies raised about it, and to think those all in a
wrong way who never meet.” 5 “The sciences . . . stand al-
most at a stay, without receiving any augmentations worthy
of the L man race ; . . . and all the tradition and succession
of schook is still a succession of masters and scholars, not of
inventors. ... In what is now done in the matter of science
there is only a whirling about, and perpetual agitation, end-
ing where it began.” 6 All through the years of his rise and
exaltation he brooded over the restoration or reconstruction
of philosophy ; “Meditor Instaurationem philosophiae .” 7

1 Ibid.

2 In Nichol, ii, 149.

&Adv. of L., vi, 3.

*Ibid., i.

6 Ibid.

e Preface to Magna Instauratio.

7 Bedargutio Philosophiarum.

132

THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY

He planned to centre all his studies around this task. First
of all, he tells us in his “Plan of the Work,” he would writf*
some Introductory Treatises , explaining the stagnation of
philosophy through the posthumous persistence of old methods,
and outlining his proposals for a new beginning. Secondly he
would attempt a new Classification of the Sciences, allocating
their material to them, and listing the unsolved problems in
each field. Thirdly, he would describe his new method for the
Interpretation of Nature . Fourthly, he would try his busy
hand at actual natural science, and investigate the Phenomena
of Nature. Fifthly, he would show the Ladder of the Intel-
lect, by which the writers of the past had mounted towards
the truths that were now taking form out of the background of
medieval verbiage. Sixthly, he would attempt certain Antici-
pations of the scientific results which he was confident would
come from the use of his method. And lastly, as Second (or
Applied) Philosophy, he would picture the utopia which would
flower out of all this budding science of which he hoped to be
the prophet. The whole would constitute the Magna Instau-
ratio, the Great Reconstruction of Philosophy . 1

It was a magnificent enterprise, and — except for Aristotle
; — without precedent in the history of thought. It would dif-

i Bacon’s actual works under the foregoing heads are chiefly' these:

I. De Interpretatione Naturae Proemium (Introduction to the Interpre-
tation of Nature, 1603); Redargutio Philosophiarum (A Criticism of
Philosophies, 1609).

II. The Advancement of Learning (1603-6) ; translated as De Augments
Scientiarum, 1622).

III. Cogitata et Visa (Things Thought and Seen, 1607) ; Filum Labyrinthi
(Thread of the Labyrinth, 1606) ; Novum Organum (The New
Organon, 1608-20).

IV. Historia Naturalis (Natural History, 1622); Descriptio Globi Intel -
lectualis (Description of the Intellectual Globe, 1612).

V. Sylva Sylvarum (Forest of Forests, 1624).

VI. De Principiis (On Origins, 1621).

VII. The New Atlantis (1624).

Note. — All of the above but The New Atlantis and The Advancement of
Learning were written in Latin; and the latter was translated into Latin
by Bacon and his aides, to win for it a European audience. Since historians
and critics always use the Latin titles in their references, these are here
given for the convenience of the student.

FRANCIS BACON

£er from every other philosophy in aiming at practice rather
than at theory, at specific concrete goods rather than at specu-
lative symmetry. Knowledge is power, not mere argument
or ornament ; “it is not an opinion to be held . . . but a work
to be done ; and I . . . am laboring to lay the foundation not
of any sect or doctrine, but of utility and power.” 1 Here,
for the first time, are the voice and tone of modern science.

1. The Advancement of Learnmg

To produce works, one must have knowledge. “Nature can-
iiot be commanded except by being obeyed.” 2 Let us learn
the laws of nature, and we shall be her masters, as we are now,
in ignorance, her thralls; science is the road to utopia. But
in what condition this road is — tortuous, unlit, turning back
upon itself, lost in useless by-paths, and leading not to light
but to chaos. Let us then begin by making a survey of the
state of the sciences, and marking out for them their proper
and distinctive fields; let us “seat the sciences each in its
proper place” ; 8 examine their defects, their needs, and their
possibilities; indicate the new problems that await their light;
and in general “open and stir the earth a little about the
roots” of them. 4

This is the task which Bacon set himself in The Advance-
ment of Learning . “It is my intention,” he writes, like a king
entering his realm, “to make the circuit of knowledge, noticing
what parts lie waste and uncultivated, and abandoned by the
industry of man ; with a view to engage, by a faithful mapping
out of the deserted tracts, the energies of public and private
persons in their improvement.” 5 He would be the royal sur-
veyor of the weed-grown soil, making straight the road, and
dividing the fields among the laborers. It was a plan auda-

1 Preface to Magna Instauratio,

2 “Plan of the Work.”

*Adv . of L iv, 2.

4 Ibid., vi, 3.

s Ibid., ii, 1.

THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY

cious to the edge of immodesty; but Bacon was still young
enough (forty-two is young in a philosopher) to plan great
voyages. “I have taken all knowledge to be my province,”
he had written to Burghley in 1592; not meaning that he
would make himself a premature edition of the Encyclopedia
Britarmica, but implying merely that his work would bring
him into every field, as the critic and coordinator of every
science in the task of social reconstruction. The very magni-
tude of his purpose gives a stately magnificence to his style,
and brings him at times to the height of English prose.

So he ranges over the vast battle-ground in which human
research struggles with natural hindrance and human igno-
rance; and in every field he sheds illumination. He attaches
great importance to physiology and medicine; he exalts the
latter as regulating “a musical instrument of much and ex-
quisite workmanship easily put out of tune.” 1 But he ob-
jects to the lax empiricism of contemporary doctors, and their
facile tendency to treat all ailments with the same prescription
— usually physic. “Our physicians are like bishops, that have*
the keys of binding and loosing, but no more.” 2 They rely
too much on mere haphazard, uncoordinated individual experi-
ence; let them experiment more widely, let them illuminate
human with comparative anatomy, let them dissect and if nec-
essary vivisect ; and above all, let them construct an easily ac-
cessible and intelligible record of experiments and results.
Bacon believes that the medical profession should be permitted
to ease and quicken death (euthanasy) where the end would
be otherwise only delayed for a few days and at the cost of
great pain; but he urges the physicians to give more study
to the art of prolonging life. & This is a new part” of medi-
cine, “and deficient, though the most noble of all ; for if it may
be supplied, medicine will not then be wholly versed in sordid
cures, nor physicians be honored only for necessity, but as dis-
pensers of the greatest earthly happiness that could well be

iDe Aug., iv.

*Adv. of L., iv, 2.

FRANCIS BACON

135

conferred on mortals .” 1 One can hear some sour Schopen-
hauerian protesting, at this point, against the assumption that
longer life would be a boon, and urging, on the contrary, that
the speed with which some physicians put an end to our ill-
nesses is a consummation devoutly to be praised. But Bacon,
worried and married and harassed though he was, never
doubted that life was a very fine thing after all.

In psychology he is almost a “behaviorist” : he demands a
strict study of cause and effect in human action, and wishes
to eliminate the word chance from the vocabulary of science.
“ Chance is the name of a thing that does not exist.” 2 And
“what chance is in the universe, so will is in man.” 3 Here is
a world of meaning, and a challenge of war, all in a little
line: the Scholastic doctrine of free will is pushed aside as
beneath discussion; and the universal assumption of a “will”
distinct from the “intellect” is discarded. These are leads
which Bacon does not follow up ; 4 it is not the only case in
which he puts a book into a phrase and then passes blithely on.

Again in a few words, Bacon invents a new science — social
psychology. “Philosophers should diligently inquire into the
powers and energy of custom, exercise, habit, education, ex-
ample, imitation, emulation, company, friendship, praise, re-
proof, exhortation, reputation, laws, books, studies etc.; for
these are the things that reign in men’s morals ; by these agents
the mind is formed and subdued.” 5 So closely has this outline
been followed by the new science that it reads almost like a
table of contents for the works of Tarde, Le Bon, Ross, Wallas,
and Durkheim.

Nothing is beneath science, nor above it. Sorceries,
dreams, predictions, telepathic communications, “psychical
phenomena” in general must be subjected to scientific examina-
tion ; “for it is not known in what cases, and how far, effects

1 Ibid .

2 Novum Organum, i, 60.

3 De Interpretatione Naturae, in Nichol, ii, 118.

4 They are developed in Spinoza’s Ethics, Appendix to Book I.

&Jdv. of L., vii, 8.

136

THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY

attributed to superstition participate of natural causes .” 1
Despite his strong naturalistic bent he feels the fascination of
these problems ; nothing human is alien to him. Who knows
what unsuspected truth, what new science, indeed, may grow
put of these investigations, as chemistry budded out from al-
chemy? “Alchemy may be compared to the man who told his
sons he had left them gold buried somewhere in his vineyard;
where they, by digging, found no gold, but by turning up the
mould about the roots of the vines, procured a plentiful vin-
tage. So the search and endeavors to make gold have brought
many useful inventions and instructive experiments to light.” 2
Still another science grows to form in Book VIII: the sci-
ence of success in life. Not yet having fallen from power.
Bacon offers some preliminary hints on how to rise in the
world. The first requisite is knowledge: of ourselves and of
others. Gnothe secmton is but half ; know thyself is valuable
chiefly as a means of knowing others. We must diligently

inform ourselves of the particular persons we have to deal
with — their tempers, desires, views, customs, habits; the
assistances, helps and assurances whereon they principally
rely, and whence they received their power ; their defects and
weaknesses, whereat they chiefly lie open and are accessible ;
their friends, factions, patrons, dependants, enemies, enviers,
rivals; their times and manners of access. . . . But the
surest key for unlocking the minds of others turns upon
searching and sifting either their tempers and natures, or
their ends and designs; and the more weak and simple are
best judged by their temper, but the more prudent and close
by their designs. . . . But the shortest way to this whole
inquiry rests upon three particulars; viz. — 1. In procuring
numerous friendships. . . . 2. In observing a prudent mean
and moderation between freedom of discourse and silence.

. . . But above all, nothing conduces more to the well-rep-
resenting of a man’s self, and securing his own right, than not
to disarm one’s self by too much sweetness and good-nature,

iDe Aug., ix, in Nichol, ii, 129.

of lt. % i f

FRANCIS BACON

137

Which exposes a man to injuries and reproaches; but
rather . . . at times to dart out some sparks of a free and
generous mind, that have no less of the sting than the
honey . 1

Friends are for Bacon chiefly a means to power ; he shares
with Machiavelli a point of view which one is at first inclined
to attribute to the Renaissance, till one thinks of the fine and
uncalculating friendships of Michelangelo and Cavalieri, Mon-
taigne and La Boetie, Sir Philip Sidney and Hubert Lan-
guet . 2 Perhaps this very practical assessment of friendship
helps to explain Bacon’s fall from power, as similar views
help to explain Napoleon’s; for a man’s friends will seldom
practice a higher philosophy in their relations with him than
that which he professes in his treatment of them. Bacon goes
on to quote Bias, one of the Seven Wise Men of ancient Greece :
“Love your friend as if he were to become your enemy, and
your enemy as if he were to become your friend.” 3 Do not
betray even to your friend too much of your real purposes and
thoughts; in conversation, ask questions oftener than you ex-
press opinions; and when you speak, offer data and informa-
tion rather than beliefs and judgments . 4 Manifest pride is a
help to advancement; and “ostentation is a fault in ethics
rather than in politics.” 5 Here again one is reminded of Na-
poleon ; Bacon, like the little Corsican, was a simple man
enough within his walls, but outside them he affected a cere-
mony and display which he thought indispensable to public
repute.

So Bacon runs from field to field, pouring the seed of his
thought into every science. At the end of his survey he comes
to the conclusion that science by itself is not enough : there must
be a force and discipline outside the sciences to coordinate
them and point them to a goal. “There is another great and

ilbid., viii, 2.

2 Cf. Edward Carpenter’s delightful Iolaiis: an Anthology of Friendship .
sAdv. of L., viii, 2.

4 Essays “Of Dissimulation” and “Of Discourse ”

*Adv. of L viii, 2.

188

THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY

powerful cause why the sciences have made but little progress,
which is this. It is not possible to run a course aright when
the goal itself has not been rightly placed.” 1 What science
needs is philosophy — the analysis of scientific method, and the
coordination of scientific purposes and results; without this,
any science must be superficial. “For as no perfect view of
a country can be taken from a flat ; so it is impossible to dis-
cover the remote and deep parts of any science by standing
upon the level of the same science, or without ascending to
a higher.” 2 He condemns the habit of looking at isolated
facts out of their context, without considering the unity
of nature; as if, he says, one should carry a small candle
about the corners of a room radiant with a central light.

Philosophy, rather than science, is in the long run Bacon’s
love ; it is only philosophy which can give even to a life of tur«>
moil and grief the stately peace that comes of understanding,
“Learning conquers or mitigates the fear of death and adverse
fortune.” He quotes Virgil’s great lines :

Felix qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas,

Quique metus omnes, et inexorabile fatum,

Subjecit pedibus, strepitumque Acherontis avari —

“happy the man who has learned the causes of things, and has
put under his feet all fears, and inexorable fate, and the noisy
strife of the hell of greed.” It is perhaps the best fruit of
philosophy that through it we unlearn the lesson of endless
acquisition which an industrial environment so insistently re-
peats. “Philosophy directs us first to seek the goods of the
mind, and the rest will either be supplied, or not much
wanted.” 3 A bit of wisdom is a joy forever.

Government suffers, precisely like science, for lack of phi-
losophy. Philosophy bears to science the same relationship
which statesmanship bears to politics: movement guided by

lAdo. of L ,, i, 81.

2 Ibid., i.

&Ibid^ viii, 2»

FRANCIS BACON

139

total knowledge and perspective, as against aimless and in-
dividual seeking. Just as the pursuit of knowledge becomes
scholasticism when divorced from the actual needs of men and
life, so the pursuit of politics becomes a destructive bedlam
when divorced from science and philosophy. “It is wrong to
trust the natural body to empirics, who commonly have a few
receipts whereon they rely, but who know neither the cause of
the disease, nor the constitution of patients, nor the danger
of accidents, nor the true methods of cure. And so it must
needs be dangerous to have the civil body of states managed
by empirical statesmen, unless well mixed with others who are
grounded in learning. . . . Though he might be thought par-
tial to his profession who said, 6 States would then be happy,
when either kings were philosophers or philosophers kings,’
yet so much is verified by experience, that the best times have
happened under wise and learned princes.” 1 And he reminds
us of the great emperors who ruled Rome after Domitian
and before Commodus.

So Bacon, like Plato and us all, exalted his hobby, and of-
fered it as the salvation of man. But he recognized, much
more clearly than Plato (and the distinction announces the
modern age), the necessity of specialist science, and of soldiers
and armies of specialist research. No one mind, not even
Bacon’s, could cover the whole field, though he should look
from Olympus’ top itself. He knew he needed help, and keenly
felt his loneliness in the mountain-air of his unaided enterprise.
“What comrades have you in your work?” he asks a friend.
“As for me, I am in the completest solitude.” 2 He dreams of
scientists coordinated in specialization by constant communion
and cooperation, and by some great organization holding them
together to a goal. “Consider what may be expected from
men abounding in leisure, and from association of labors, and
from successions of ages ; the rather because it is not a way over
which only one man can pass at a time (as is the case with that

* Ibid., i.

2 In Nichol, ii, 4.

140

THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY

of reasoning), but within which the labors and industries of
men (especially as regards the collecting of experience) may
with the best effort be collected and distributed, and then com-
bined. For then only will men begin to know their strength
when, instead of great numbers doing all the same things, one
shall take charge of one thing, and another of another.” 1
Science, which is the organization of knowledge, must itself be
organized.

And this organization must be international; let it pass
freely over the frontiers, and it may make Europe intellectu-
ally one. “The next want I discover is the little sympathy
and correspondence which exists between colleges and univer-
sities, as well throughout Europe as in the same state and
kingdom.” 2 Let all these universities allot subjects and prob-
lems among themselves, and cooperate both in research and
in publication. So organized and correlated, the universities
might be deemed worthy of such royal support as would make
them what they shall be in Utopia — centers of impartial learn-
ing ruling the world. Bacon notes “the mean salaries appor-
tioned to public lectureships, whether in the sciences or the
arts ”; 3 and he feels that this will continue till governments
take over the great tasks of education. “The wisdom of the
ancientest and best times always complained that states were
too busy with laws, and too remiss in point of education.” 4
His great dream is the socialization of science for the conquest
of nature and the enlargement of the power of man.

And so he appeals to James I, showering upon him the flat-
tery which he knew his Royal Highness loved to sip. James
was a scholar as well as a monarch, prouder of his pen than
of his sceptre or his sword; something might be expected of
so literary and erudite a king. Bacon tells James that the
plans he has sketched are “indeed opera basilica ” — kingly
tasks — “towards which the endeavors of one man can be but

1 Nov. Org i, I1&

2 Ibid,

3 Adv. of L., \

* Ibid., I

FRANCIS BACON

141

as an image on a cross-road, which points out the way but
cannot tread it.” Certainly these royal undertakings will in-
volve expense ; but “as the secretaries and spies of princes and
states bring in bills for intelligence, so you must allow the
spies and intelligencers of nature to bring in their bills if you
would not be ignorant of many things worthy to be known.
And if Alexander placed so large a treasure at Aristotle’s com-
mand for the support of hunters, fowlers, fishers, and the like,
in much more need do they stand of this beneficence who un-
fold the labyrinths of nature.” 1 With such royal aid the
Great Reconstruction can be completed in a few years; with-
out it the task will require generations.

What is refreshingly new in Bacon is the magnificent as-
surance with which he predicts the conquest of nature by man ;
“I stake all on the victory of art over nature in the race.”
That which men have done is “but an earnest of the things
they shall do.” But why this great hope? Had not men
been seeking truth, and exploring the paths of science, these
two thousand years? Why should one hope now for such
great success where so long a time had given so modest a
result? — Yes, Bacon answers; but what if the methods men
have used have been wrong and useless? What if the road
has been lost, and research has gone into by-paths ending
in the air? We need a ruthless revolution in our methods
of research and thought, in our system of science and
logic; we need a new Organon, better than Aristotle’s, fit for
this larger world.

And so Bacon offers us his supreme book.

2. The New Organon

“Bacon’s greatest performance,” says his bitterest critic, “is
the first book of the Novum Orgcmim .” 2 Never did a man
put more life into logic, making induction an epic adventure

1 Ibid.* ii, 1.

2 Macaulay, op. cit., p. 92

142

THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY

and a conquest. If one must study logic, let him begin with
this book. “This part of human philosophy which regards
logic is disagreeable to the taste of many, as appearing to them
no other than a net, and a snare of thorny subtlety. . . . But
if we would rate things according to their real worth, the ra-
tional sciences are the keys to all the rest.” 1

Philosophy has been barren so long, says Bacon, because she
needed a new method to make her fertile. The great mistake
of the Greek philosophers was that they spent so much time
in theory, so little in observation. But thought should be the
aide of observation, not its substitute. “Man,” says the first
aphorism of the Novum Organum, as if flinging a challenge to
all metaphysics, — “Man, as the minister and interpreter of
nature, does and understands as much as his observations on
the order of nature . . . permit him; and neither knows nor
is capable of mors.” The predecessors of Socrates were in
this matter sounder than his followers ; Democritus, in particu-
lar, had a nose for facts, rather than an eye for the clouds.
No wonder that philosophy has advanced so little since Aris-
totle’s day; it has been using Aristotle’s methods. “To go
beyond Aristotle by the light of Aristotle is to think that a
borrowed light can increase the original light from which it is
taken.” 2 Now, after two thousand years of logic-chopping
with the machinery invented by Aristotle, philosophy has fallen
so low that none will do her reverence. All these medieval
theories, theorems and disputations must be cast out and for-
gotten; to renew herself philosophy must begin again with a
clean slate and a cleansed mind.

The first step, therefore, is the Expurgation of the Intel-
lect. We must become as little children, innocent of isms and
abstractions, washed clear of prejudices and preconceptions.
We must destroy the Idols of the mind.

An idol, as Bacon uses the word (reflecting perhaps the

l Adv. of L., 1.

a Valerius Terminus.

FRANCIS BACON

MS

Protestant rejection of image-worship), is a picture taken for
a reality, a thought mistaken for a thing. Errors come un :
der this head; and the first problem of logic is to trace and
dam the sources of these errors. Bacon proceeds now to a
justly famous analysis of fallacies; “no man,” said Condillac,
“has better known than Bacon the causes of human error.”

These errors are, first, Idols of the Tribe , — fallacies natu-
ral to humanity in general. “For man’s sense is falsely as-
serted” (by Protagoras’ “Man is the measure of all things”)
“to be the standard of things : on the contrary, all the percep-
tions, both of the senses and the mind, bear reference to man
and not to the universe ; and the human mind resembles those
uneven mirrors which impart their own properties to different
objects . . . and distort and disfigure them.” 1 Our thoughts
are pictures rather of ourselves than of their objects. For
example, “the human understanding, from its peculiar na-
ture, easily supposes a greater degree of order and regularity
in things than it really finds. . . . Hence the fiction that all
celestial bodies move in perfect circles.” 2 Again,

the human understanding, when any proposition has been
once laid down (either from general admission and belief,
or from the pleasure it affords), forces everything else to
add fresh support and confirmation: and although most
cogent and abundant instances may exist to the contrary,
yet either does not observe, or despises them, or it gets
rid of and rejects them by some distinction, with violent
and injurious prejudice, rather than sacrifice the authority
of its first conclusions. It was well answered by him who
was shown in a temple the votive tablets suspended by such
as had escaped the peril of shipwreck, and was pressed as
to whether he would then recognize the power of the gods.

. . . “But where are the portraits of those that have per-
ished in spite of their vows?” All superstition is much the
same, whether it be that of astrology, dreams, omens, retribu-

*Nov. Org i, 41.
zibid., 3. 45.

144

THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY

tive judgment, or the like, in all of which the deluded be-
lievers observe events which are fulfilled, but neglect and pass
over their failure, though it be much more common . 1

“Having first determined the question according to his will,
man then resorts to experience; and bending her into con-
formity with his placets, leads her about like a captive in a
procession.” 2 In short, “the human understanding is no dry
light, but receives an infusion from the will and affections,
whence proceed sciences which may be called ‘sciences as one
would.’ . . . For what a man had rather were true, he more
readily believes.” 3 Is it not so?

Bacon gives at this point a word of golden counsel. “In
general let every student of nature take this as a rule — that
whatever his mind seizes and dwells upon with peculiar satis-
faction, is to be held in suspicion ; and that so much the more
care is to be taken, in dealing with such questions, to keep
the understanding even and clear .” 4 “The understanding
must not be allowed to jump and fly from particulars to re-
mote axioms and of almost the highest generality; ... it
must not be supplied with wings, but rather hung with weights
to keep it from leaping and flying.” 5 The imagination may
be the greatest enemy of the intellect, whereas it should be
only its tentative and experiment.

A second class of errors Bacon calls Idols of the Cave — er^
rors peculiar to the individual man. “For every one . . . has
a cave or den of his own, which refracts and discolors the light
of nature” ; this is his character as formed by nature and nur-
ture, and by his mood or condition of body and mind. Some
minds, e. g., are constitutionally analytic, and see differences
everywhere; others are constitutionally synthetic, and see re-
semblances; so we have the scientist and the painter on the

1 Ibid., i, 46.

2 Ibid., i, 63.

3 Ibid,, i, 49.
tlbid., i, 58.

® Ibid., i, 104.

FRANCIS BACON

UB

one hand, and on the other hand the poet and the philosopher.
Again, “some dispositions evince an unbounded admiration for
antiquity, others eagerly embrace . novelty ; only a few can
preserve the just medium, and neither tear up what the an-
cients have correctly established, nor despise the just innova-
tions of the moderns.” 1 Truth knows no parties.

Thirdly, Idols of the MarJcet-place, arising “from the com-
merce and association of men with one another. For men con-
verse by means of language ; but words are imposed according
to the understanding of the crowd; and there arises from a
bad and inapt formation of words, a wonderful obstruction to
the mind.” 2 Philosophers deal out infinites with the careless
assurance of grammarians handling infinitives; and yet does
any man know what this “infinite” is, or whether it has even
taken the precaution of existing? Philosophers talk about
“first cause uncaused,” or “first mover unmoved” ; but are not
these again fig-leaf phrases used to cover naked ignorance,
and perhaps indicative of a guilty conscience in the user?
Every clear and honest head knows that no cause can be cause-
less, nor any mover unmoved. Perhaps the greatest recon-
struction in philosophy would be simply this — that we should
stop lying.

“Lastly, there are idols which have migrated into men’s
minds from the various dogmas of philosophers, and also from
wrong laws of demonstration. These I call Idols of the
Theatre, because in my judgment all the received systems of
philosophy are but so many stage-plays, representing worlds of
their own creation after an unreal and scenic fashion. . . .
And in the plays of this philosophic theater you may observe
the same thing which is found in the theater of the poets, —
that stories invented for the stage are more compact and
elegant, and more as we would wish them to be, than true
stories out of history .” 3 The world as Plato describes it

1 Ibid., i, 56.

* Ibid., i, 43.

%lbid., i, 44.

146 THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY

is merely a world constructed by Plato, and pictures Plato
rather than the world.

We shall never get far along towards the truth if these
idols are still to trip us up, even the best of us, at every turn.
We need new modes of reasoning, new tools for the under-
standing. “And as the immense regions of the West Indies
had never been discovered, if the use of the compass had not
first been known, it is no wonder that the discovery and ad-
vancement of arts hath made no greater progress, when the
art of inventing and discovering of the sciences remains
hitherto unknown.” 1 “And surely it would be disgraceful,
if, while the regions of the material globe . . . have been in
our times laid widely open and revealed, the intellectual globe
should remain shut up within the narrow limits of old dis-
coveries.” 2

Ultimately, our troubles are due to dogma and deduction;
we find no new truth because we take some venerable but
questionable proposition as an indubitable starting-point, and
never think of putting this assumption itself to the test of
observation or experiment. Now “if a man will begin with
certainties, he shall end in doubts ; but if he will be content to
begin in doubts he shall end in certainties” (alas, it is not
quite inevitable). Here is a note common in the youth of
modern philosophy, part of its declaration of independence;
Descartes too would presently talk of the necessity of “me-
thodic doubt” as the cobweb-clearing pre-requisite of honest
thought.

Bacon proceeds to give an admirable description of the
scientific method of inquiry. “There remains simple experi-
ence; which, if taken as it comes, is called accident” (“em-
pirical”), “if sought for, experiment. . . . The true method
of experience first lights the candle” (hypothesis), “and then
by means of the candle shows the way” (arranges and delimits
the experiment) ; “commencing as it does with experience duly

1 ddv. of L., v, 2.

2 Nov. Org. 3 i, 84.

FRANCIS BACON 147

ordered and digested, not bungling nor erratic, and from it
educing axioms, and from established axioms again new ex«
perimentSo” 1 (We have here — as again in a later passage *
which speaks of the results of initial experiments as a “first
vintage” to guide further research — an explicit, though per-
haps inadequate, recognition of that need for hypothesis,
experiment and deduction which some of Bacon’s critics sup-
pose him to have entirely overlooked.) We must go to
nature instead of to books, traditions and authorities; we
must “put nature on the rack and compel her to bear witness”
even against herself, so that we may control her to our ends.
We must gather together from every quarter a “natural his-
tory” of the world, built by the united research of Europe’s
scientists. We must have induction.

But induction does not mean “simple enumeration” of all
the data; conceivably, this might be endless, and useless; no
mass of material can by itself make science. This would be
like “chasing a quarry over an open country”; we must
narrow and enclose our field in order to capture our prey.
The method of induction must include a technique for the
classification of data and the elimination of hypotheses; so
that by the progressive canceling of possible explanations
one only shall at last remain. Perhaps the most useful item
in this technique is the “table of more or less,” which lists
instances in which two qualities or conditions increase or
decrease together, and so reveals, presumably, a causal rela-
tion between the simultaneously varying phenomena. So
Bacon, asking, What is heat? — seeks for some factor that in-
creases with the increase of heat, and decreases with its de-
crease; he finds, after long analysis, an exact correlation
between heat and motion; and his conclusion that heat is a
form of motion constitutes one of his few specific contributions
to natural science.

By this insistent accumulation and analysis of data we

i Ibid., i, 82.

& Ibid., ii, 20.

148

THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY

come, in Bacon’s phrase, to the form of the phenomenon
which we study, — to its secret nature and its inner essence.
The theory of forms in Bacon is very much like the theory
of ideas in Plato : a metaphysics of science. “When we speak
of forms we mean nothing else than those laws and regulations
of simple action which arrange and constitute any simple
nature. . . . The form of heat or the form of light, there-
fore, means no more than the law of heat or the law of light.” 1
(In a similar strain Spinoza was to say that the law of the
circle is its substance .) “For although nothing exists in na-
ture except individual bodies exhibiting clear individual effects
according to particular laws ; yet, in each branch of learning,
those very laws — their investigation, discovery and develop-
ment — are the foundation both of theory and of practice.” 2
Of theory and of practice; one without the other is useless
and perilous; knowledge that does not generate achievement
is a pale and bloodless thing, unworthy of mankind. We
strive to learn the forms of things not for the sake of the forms
but because by knowing the forms, the laws, we may remake
things in the image of our desire. So we study mathematics
in order to reckon quantities and build bridges; we study
psychology in order to find our way in the jungle of society.
When science has sufficiently ferreted out the forms of things,
the world will be merely the raw material of whatever utopia
man may decide to make.

3. The Utopia of Science

To perfect science so, and then to perfect social order by
putting science in control, would itself be utopia enough.
Such is the world described for us in Bacon’s brief fragment
and last work, The New Atlantis , published two years before
his death. Wells thinks it Bacon’s “greatest service to
science” 3 to have drawn for us, even so sketchily, the picture

1 Ibid., ii, 13, 17.

2 Ibid,, ii, 2.

3 Outline of History, ch. xxxv, sect. 6.

FRANCIS BACON

of a society in which at last science has its proper place as
the master of things; it was a royal act of imagination by
which for three centuries one goal has been held in view by
the great army of warriors in the battle of knowledge and
invention against ignorance and poverty. Here in these few
pages we have the essence and the “form” of Francis Bacon,
the law of his being and his life, the secret and continuous
aspiration of his soul.

Plato in the Timaeus 1 had told of the old legend of Atlantis,
the sunken continent in the Western seas. Bacon and others
identified the new America of Columbus and Cabot with this
old Atlantis; the great continent had not sunk after all, but
only men’s courage to navigate the sea. Since this old Atlantis
was now known, and seemed inhabited by a race vigorous
enough, but not quite like the brilliant Utopians of Bacon’s
fancy, he conceived of a new Atlantis, an isle in that distant
Pacific which only Drake and Magellan had traversed, an
isle distant enough from Europe and from knowledge to give
generous scope to the Utopian imagination.

The story begins in the most artfully artless way, like
the great tales of Defoe and Swift. “We sailed from Peru
(where we had continued for the space of one whole year),
for China and Japan by the South Sea.” Came a great
calm, in which the ships for weeks lay quietly on the boundless
ocean like specks upon a mirror, while the provisions of the
adventurers ebbed away. And then resistless winds drove the
vessels pitilessly north and north and north, out of the island-
dotted south into an endless wilderness of sea. The rations
were reduced, and reduced again, and again reduced; and
disease took hold of the crew. At last, when they had resigned
themselves to death, they saw, almost unbelieving, a fair island
looming up under the sky. On the shore, as their vessel
neared it, they saw not savages, but men simply and yet
beautifully clothed, clean, and manifestly of developed in*
telligence. They were permitted to land, but were told tha*.
igect 25.

150

THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY

the island government allowed no strangers to remain.
Nevertheless, since some of the crew were sick, they might all
stay till these were well again.

During the weeks of convalescence the wanderers unraveled,
day by day, the mystery of the New Atlantis. “There
reigned in this island about nineteen hundred years ago,” one
of the inhabitants tells them, “a King whose memory above all
others we most adore. . . . His name was Solamona, and we
esteem him as the Law-giver of our nation. This King had a
large heart . . . and was wholly bent to make his kingdom
and people happy .” 1 “Among the excellent acts of that
King one above all hath the preeminence. It was the creation
and institution of the Order, or Society, which is called
Solomon’s House; the noblest foundation, as we think, that
was ever upon the earth ; and the lantherne of this kingdom.” 2

There follows a description of Solomon’s House, too com-
plicated for a quoted abstract, but eloquent enough to (draw
from the hostile Macaulay the judgment that “there is not
to be found in any human composition a passage more
eminently distinguished by profound and serene wisdom.” 3
Solomon’s House takes the place, in the New Atlantis, of the
Houses of Parliament in London ; it is the home of the island
government. But there are no politicians there, no insolent
“elected persons,” no “national palaver,” as Carlyle would
say; no parties, caucuses, primaries, conventions, campaigns,
buttons, lithographs, editorials, speeches, lies, and elections;
the idea of filling public office by such dramatic methods seems
never to have entered the heads of these Atlantans. But
the road to the heights of scientific repute is open to all, and
only those who have traveled the road sit in the councils of
the state. It is a government of the people and for the people
by the selected best of the people ; a government by technicians,
architects, astronomers, geologists, biologists, physicians,

1 The New Atlantis 3 Cambridge University Press, 1900; p. 20.

2 Ibid., p. 22.

8 Ibid., p* xxv.

FRANCIS BACON

151

chemists, economists, sociologists, psychologists and philoso-
phers. Complicated enough ; but think of a government with-
out politicians!

Indeed there is little government at all in the New Atlantis ;
these governors are engaged rather in controlling nature than
in ruling man. “The End of Our Foundation is the Knowl-
edge of Causes and secret motions of things ; and the enlarg-
ing of the bounds of human empire, to the effecting of all
things possible.” 1 This is the key-sentence of the book, and
of Francis Bacon. We find the governors engaged in such
undignified tasks as studying the stars, arranging to utilize
for industry the power of falling water, developing gases for
the cure of various ailments , 2 experimenting on animals for
surgical knowledge, growing new varieties of plants and
animals by cross-breeding, etc. “We imitate the flights of
birds; we have some degree of flying in the air. We have
ships and boats for going under water.” There is foreign
trade, but of an unusual sort; the island produces what it
consumes, and consumes what it produces; it does not go to
war for foreign markets. “We maintain a trade, not of gold,
silver, or jewels, nor for silks, nor for spices, nor for any
other commodity or matter ; but only for God’s first creature,
which was light; to have light of the growth of all parts of
the world.” 3 These “Merchants of Light” are members of
Solomon’s House who are sent abroad every twelve years to
live among foreign peoples of every quarter of the civilized
globe; to learn their language and study their sciences and
industries and literatures; and to return, at the end of the
twelve years, to report their findings to the leaders of Sol-
omon’s House; while their places abroad are taken by a new
group of scientific explorers. In this way the best of all the
world comes soon to the New Atlantis.

Brief as the picture is, we see in it again the outline of

1 Ibid p. 34.

2 Cf. The New York Times of May 2, 1923, for a report of War Depg.tt
ment chemists on the use of war gases to cure diseases.

*New Atlantis, p. 24.

152

THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY

every philosopher’s utopia — a people guided in peace and
modest plenty by their wisest men. The dream of every
thinker is to replace the politician by the scientist ; why does
it remain only a dream after so many incarnations? Is it
because the thinker is too dreamily intellectual to go out into
the arena of affairs and build his concept into reality? Is
it because the hard ambition of the narrowly acquisitive soul
is forever destined to overcome the gentle and scrupulous
aspirations of philosophers and saints? Or is it that science
is not yet grown to maturity and conscious power? — that only
in our day do physicists and chemists and technicians begin to
see that the rising role of science in industry and war gives
them a pivotal position in social strategy, and points to the
time when their organized strength will persuade the world to
call them to leadership? Perhaps science has not yet
merited the mastery of the world; and perhaps in a little
while it will.

v. CRITICISM

And now how shall we appraise this philosophy of Francis
Bacon’s?

Is there anything new in it? Macaulay thinks that induc-
tion as described by Bacon is a very old-fashioned affair, over
which there is no need of raising any commotion, much less a
monument. “Induction has been practiced from morning
till night by every human being since the world began. The
man who infers that mince pies disagreed with him because
he was ill when he ate them, well when he ate them not, most
ill when he ate most and least ill when he ate least, has em-
ployed, unconsciously but sufficiently, all the tables of the
Novum Organum .” 1 But John Smith hardly handles his
“table of more or less” so accurately, and more probably will
continue his mince-pies despite the seismic disturbances of his
lower strata. And even were John Smith so wise, it would
not shear Bacon of his merit; for what does logic do but

*Op. cit., p. 471.

FRANCIS BACON 153

formulate the experience and methods of the wise? — what does
any discipline do but try by rules to turn the art of a few
into a science teachable to all?

But is the formulation Bacon’s own? Is not the Socratic
method inductive? Is not Aristotle’s biology inductive? Did
not Roger Bacon practise as well as preach the inductive
method which Francis Bacon merely preached? Did not Gal-
ileo formulate better the procedure that science has actually
used? True of Roger Bacon, less true of Galileo, less true
yet of Aristotle, least true of Socrates. Galileo outlined
the aim rather than the method of science, holding up before
its followers the goal of mathematical and quantitative formu-
lation of all experience and relationships; Aristotle practised
induction when there was nothing else for him to do, and
where the material did not lend itself to his penchant for the
deduction of specific conclusions from magnificently general
assumptions ; and Socrates did not so much practise induction
i — the gathering of data — as analysis — the definition and dis,
crimination of words and ideas.

Bacon makes no claim to parthenogenetic originality; like
Shakespeare he takes with a lordly hand, and with the same
excuse, that he adorns whatever he touches. Every man has
his sources, as every organism has its food ; what is his is the
way in which he digests them and turns them into flesh and
blood. As Rawley puts it, Bacon “contemned no man’s ob-
servations, but would light his torch at every man’s candle.” 1
But Bacon acknowledges these debts: he refers to “that useful
method of Hippocrates,” 2 — so sending us at once to the real
source of inductive logic among the Greeks ; and “Plato,” he
writes (where less accurately we write “Socrates”), “giveth
good example of inquiry by induction and view of particulars ;
though in such a wandering manner as is of no force or
fruit.” 3 He would have disdained to dispute his obligations

1 Quoted by J. M. Robertson, Introduction to The Philosophical Works of
Francis Bacon ; p. 7.

2 Adv. of L., iv, 2.

8 Fil. Lab ad) fin .

$54 THE STORY OP PHILOSOPHY

to these predecessors; and we should disdain to exaggerate
them..

Bat then again, is the Baconian method correct? Is it the
method most fruitfully used in modem science? No: gener-
ally, science has used, with best result, not the accumulation
of data (“natural history”) and their manipulation by the
complicated tables of the Novum Organum, but the simpler
method of hypothesis, deduction and experiment. So Dar-
win, reading Malthus’ Essay on Population, conceived the
idea of applying to all organisms the Malthusian hypothe-
sis that population tends to increase faster than the means of
subsistence; deduced from this hypothesis the probable con-
clusion that the pressure of population on the food-supply re-
sults in a struggle for existence in which the fittest survive,
and by which in each generation every species is changed into
closer adaptation to its environment; and finally (having by
hypothesis and deduction limited his problem and his field of
observation) turned to “the unwithered face of nature” and
made for twenty years a patient inductive examination of the
facts. Again, Einstein conceived, or took from Newton, the
hypothesis that light travels in curved, not straight lines ; de-
duced from it the conclusion that a star appearing to be (on
the straight-line theory) in a certain position in the heavens
is really a little to one side of that position; and he invited!
experiment and observation to test the conclusion. Obviously
the function of hypothesis and imagination is greater than
Bacon supposed; and the procedure of science is more direct
and circumscribed than in the Baconian scheme. Bacon him-
self anticipated the superannuation of his method; the actual
practice of science would discover better modes of investiga-
tion than could be worked out in the interludes of statesman*
ship. “These things require some ages for the ripening of
them.”

Even a lover of the Baconian spirit must concede, too, that
the great Chancellor, while laying down the law for science,
lailed to keep abreast of the science of his time. He rejected

FRANCIS BACON

158

Copernicus and ignored Kepler and Tycho Brahe; he depre-
ciated Gilbert and seemed unaware of Harvey. In truth, he
loved discourse better than research ; or perhaps he had no time
for toilsome investigations. Such work as he did in philos-
ophy and science was left in fragments and chaos at his death ;
full of repetitions, contradictions, aspirations, and introduc-
tions. Ars longa 9 vita brevis — art is long and time is fleeting:
this is the tragedy of every great soul.

To assign to so overworked a man, whose reconstruction
of philosophy had to be crowded into the crevices of a harassed
and a burdened political career, the vast and complicated crea-
tions of Shakespeare, is to waste the time of students with the
parlor controversies of idle theorists. Shakespeare lacks just
that which distinguishes the lordly Chancellor — erudition and
philosophy. Shakespeare has an impressive smattering of
many sciences, and a mastery of none ; in all of them he speaks
with the eloquence of an amateur. He accepts astrology:
“This huge state . . . whereon the stars in secret influence
comment.” 1 He is forever making mistakes which the learned
Bacon could not possibly have made: his Hector quotes Aris-
totle and his Coriolanus alludes to Cato ; he supposes the Luper-
calia to be a hill; and he understands Caesar about as pro-
foundly as Caesar is understood by H. G. Wells. He makes
countless references to his early life and his matrimonial tri-
bulations. He perpetrates vulgarities, obscenities and puns
natural enough in the gentle roisterer who could not quite out-
live the Stratford rioter and the butcher’s son, but hardly to
be expected in the cold and calm philosopher. Carlyle calls
Shakespeare the greatest of intellects; but he was rather the
greatest of imaginations, and the keenest eye. He is an ines-
capable psychologist, but he is not a philosopher: he has no
structure of thought unified by a purpose for his own life and
for mankind. He is immersed in love and its problems, and
thinks of philosophy, through Montaigne’s phrases, only when
his heart is broken. Otherwise he accepts the world blithely

i Sonnet xv.

166 THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY

enough ; he is not consumed with the reconstructive vision that
ennobled Plato, or Nietzsche, or Bacon.

Now the greatness and the weakness of Bacon lay precisely
in his passion for unity, his desire to spread the wings of his
coordinating genius over a hundred sciences. He aspired to
be like Plato, “a man of sublime genius, who took a view of
everything as from a lofty rock.” He broke down under the
weight of the tasks he had laid upon himself; he failed for-
givably because he undertook so much. He could not enter
the promised land of science, but as Cowley’s epitaph ex-
pressed it, he could at least stand upon its border and point
out its fair features in the distance.

His achievement was not the less great because it was in-
direct. His philosophical works, though little read now,
‘‘moved the intellects which moved the world.” 1 He made
himself the eloquent voice of the optimism and resolution of
the Renaissance. Never was any man so great a stimulus to
Other thinkers. King James, it is true, refused to accept his
suggestion for the support of science, and said of the Novum
Orgarmm that “it was like the peace of God, which passeth all
understanding.” But better men, in 1662, founding that
Royal Society which was to become the greatest association of
scientists in the world, named Bacon as their model and in-
spiration; they hoped that this organization of English re-
search would lead the way toward that Europe-wide association
which the Advancement of Learning had taught them to
desire. And when the great minds of the French Enlighten-
ment undertook that masterpiece of intellectual enterprise, the
Encyclopedic, they dedicated it to Francis Bacon. “If,” said
Diderot in the Prospectus, “we have come of it successfully,
we shall owe most to the Chancellor Bacon, who threw out the
plan of an universal dictionary of sciences and arts, at a
time when, so to say, neither arts nor sciences existed. That
extraordinary genius, when it was impossible to write a history
i Macaulay, p. 491.

FRANCIS BACON 157

of what was known, wrote one of what it was necessary to
learn.” D’Alembert called Bacon “the greatest, the most
universal, and the most eloquent of philosophers.” The Con-
vention published the works of Bacon at the expense of the
state . 1 The whole tenor and career of British thought have
followed the philosophy of Bacon. His tendency to conceive
the world in Democritean mechanical terms gave to his
secretary, Hobbes, the starting-point for a thorough-going
materialism ; his inductive method gave to Locke the idea of an
empirical psychology, bound by observation and freed from
theology and metaphysics ; and his emphasis on “commodities”
and “fruits” found formulation in Bentham’s identification of
the useful and the good.

Wherever the spirit of control has overcome the spirit of
resignation, Bacon’s influence has been felt. He is the voice
of all those Europeans who have changed a continent from a
forest into a treasure-land of art and science, and have made
their little peninsula the center of the world. “Men are not
animals erect,” said Bacon, “but immortal gods.” “The Cre-
ator has given us souls equal to all the world, and yet satiable
not even with a world.” Everything is possible to man*
Time is young ; give us some little centuries, and we shall con-
trol and remake all things. We shall perhaps at last learn the
noblest lesson of all, that man must not fight man, but must
make war only on the obstacles that nature offers to the tri-
umph of man. “It will not be amiss,” writes Bacon, in one of
his finest passages, “to distinguish the three kinds, and as it
were grades, of ambition in mankind. The first is of those who
desire to extend their power in their native country; which
kind is vulgar and degenerate. The second is of those whd
labor to extend the power of their country and its dominion
among men; this certainly has more dignity, but not less
covetousness. But if a man endeavor to establish and extend
the power and dominion of the human race itself over the uni-

i Nichol, ii. 235.

158

THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY

verse, his ambition is without doubt both a more wholesome
thing and a nobler than the other two.” 1 It was Bacon’s
fate to be torn to pieces by these hostile ambitions struggling
for his soul.

VI. EPILOGUE

“ Men in great place are thrice servants; servants to the
sovereign or state, servants of fame, and servants of business,
so as they have no freedom, neither in their persons nor in their
action, nor in their time. . . . The rising unto place is labori-
ous, and by pains men come to greater pains ; and it is some-
times base, and by indignities men come to dignities. The
standing is slippery, and the regress is either a downfall or
at least an eclipse.” 2 What a wistful summary of Bacon’s
epilogue !

“ A man’s shortcomings,” said Goethe, “are taken from his
epoch; his virtues and greatness belong to himself.” This
seems a little unfair to the Zeitgeist , but it is exceptionally
just in the case of Bacon. Abbott , 3 after a painstaking study
of the morals prevalent at Elizabeth’s court, concludes that
all the leading figures, male and female, were disciples of
Machiavelli. Roger Ascham described in doggerel the four
cardinal virtues in demand at the court of the Queen :

Cog, lie, flatter and face,

Four ways in Court to win men grace.

If thou be thrall to none of these,

Away, good Piers ! Home, John Cheese !

It was one of the customs of those lively days for judges to
take “presents” from persons trying cases in their courts.
Bacon was not above the age in this matter ; and his tendency
to keep his expenditure several years in advance of his in-
come forbade him the luxury of scruples. It might have

i'Nov. Org., i, 129.

2 Essay “Of Great Place.”

8 Francis Bacon , ch. i.

FRANCIS BACON 159

jpassed unnoticed, except that he had made enemies in Essex*
case, and by his readiness to sabre foes with his speech. A
friend had warned him that “it is too common in every man’s
mouth in Court that ... as your tongue hath been a razor
to some, so shall theirs be to you.” 1 But he left the warnings
unnoticed. He seemed to be in good favor with the King;
he had been made Baron Verulam of Verulam in 1618, and
Viscount St. Albans in 1621 ; and for three years he had been
Chancellor.

Then suddenly the blow came. In 1621 a disappointed
suitor charged him with taking money for the despatch of
a suit ; it was no unusual matter, but Bacon knew at once
that if his enemies wished to press it they could force his
fall. He retired to his home, and waited developments.
When he learned that all his foes were clamoring for his
dismissal, he sent in his “confession and humble submission”
to the King. James, yielding to pressure from the now vic-
torious Parliament against which Bacon had too persistently
defended him, sent him to the Tower. But Bacon was released
after two days ; and the heavy fine which had been laid upon
him was remitted by the King. His pride was not quite
broken. “I was the justest judge that was in England these
fifty years,” he said; “but it was the justest judgment that
was in Parliament these two hundred years.”

He spent the five years that remained to him in the obscurity
and peace of his home, harassed by an unwonted poverty, but
solaced by the active pursuit of philosophy. In these five
years he wrote his greatest Latin work, De Augmentis
Scientiarum, published an enlarged edition of the Essays, a
fragment called Sylva Sylvarum, and a History of Henry VII.
He mourned that he had not sooner abandoned politics and
given all his time to literature and science. To the very last
moment he was occupied with work, and died, so to speak, on
the field of battle. In his essay “Of Death” he had voiced a
i Ibid., p. 13 note.

160

THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY

wish to die “in an earnest pursuit, which is like one wounded
in hot blood, who for the time scarce feels the hurt.” Like
Caesar, he was granted his choice.

In March, 1626, while riding from London to Highgate,
and turning over in his mind the question how far flesh might
be preserved from putrefaction by being covered with snow, he
resolved to put the matter to a test at once. Stopping off at
a cottage, he bought a fowl, killed it, and stuffed it with snow.
While he was doing this he was seized with chills and weak-
ness ; and finding himself too ill to ride back to town, he gave
directions that he should be taken to the nearby home of
Lord Arundel, where he took to bed. He did not yet resign
life ; he wrote cheerfully that “the experiment . . . succeeded
excellently well.” But it was his last. The fitful fever of his
varied life had quite consumed him ; he was all burnt out now,
too weak to fight the disease that crept up slowly to his heart.
He died on the ninth of April, 1626, at the age of sixty-five.

He had written in his will these proud and characteristic
words: “I bequeath my soul to God. . . . My body to be
buried obscurely. My name to the next ages and to foreign
nations.” The ages and the nations have accepted him.

CHAPTER TV

SPINOZA

I. HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL

1. The Odyssey of the Jews

T HE story of the Jews since the Dispersion is one of
the epics of European history. Driven from their
natural home by the Roman capture of Jerusalem
(70 a. d.), and scattered by flight and trade among all the
nations and to all the continents; persecuted and decimated
by the adherents of the great religions — Christianity and
Mohammedanism — which had been born of their scriptures
and their memories ; barred by the feudal system from owning
land, and by the guilds from taking part in industry; shut
up within congested ghettoes and narrowing pursuits, mobbed
by the people and robbed by the kings ; building with their
finance and trade the towns and cities indispensable to civiliza-
tion; outcast and excommunicated, insulted and injured;— -
yet, without any political structure, without any legal com-
pulsion to social unity, without even a common language, this
wonderful people has maintained itself in body and soul, has
preserved its racial and cultural integrity, has guarded with
jealous love its oldest rituals and traditions, has patiently and
resolutely awaited the day of its deliverance, and has emerged
greater in number than ever before, renowned in every field
for the contributions of its geniuses, and triumphantly re-
stored, after two thousand years of wandering, to its ancient
and unforgotten home. What drama could rival the grandeur
of these sufferings, the variety of these scenes, and the glory

161

162 THE STORY 01 PHILOSOPHY

and justice of this fulfillment? What fiction could match the
romance of this reality?

The dispersion had begun many centuries before the fall of
the Holy City; through Tyre and Sidon and other ports the
Jews had spread abroad into every nook of the Mediterranean
— to Athens and Antioch, to Alexandria and Carthage, to
Rome and Marseilles, and even to distant Spain. After the
destruction of the Temple the dispersion became almost a mass
migration. Ultimately the movement followed two streams:
one along the Danube and the Rhine, and thence later into
Poland and Russia; the other into Spain and Portugal with
the conquering Moors (711 a. d.). In Central Europe the
Jews distinguished themselves as merchants and financiers;
in the Peninsula they absorbed gladly the mathematical,
medical and philosophical lore of the Arabs, and developed
their own culture in the great schools of Cordova, Barcelona
and Seville. Here in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries the
Jews played a prominent part in transmitting ancient and
Oriental culture to western Europe. It was at Cordova that
Moses Maimonides (1135—1204!), the greatest physician of
his age, wrote his famous Biblical commentary, the Guide to
the Perplexed; it was at Barcelona that Hasdai Crescas
(1370-14)30) propounded heresies that shook all Judaism.

The Jews of Spain prospered and flourished until the con-
quest of Granada by Ferdinand in 14<92 and the final ex-
pulsion of the Moors. The Peninsular Jews now lost the
liberty which they had enjoyed under the lenient ascendency
of Islam ; the Inquisition swept down upon them with the
choice of baptism and the practice of Christianity, or exile and
the confiscation of their goods. It was not that the Church
was violently hostile to the Jews— the popes repeatedly
protested against the barbarities of the Inquisition ; but the
King of Spain thought he might fatten his purse with the
patiently-garnered wealth of this alien race. Almost in the
year that Columbus discovered America, Ferdinand discovered
the Jews.

SPINOZA 163

The great majority of the Jews accepted the harder alterna-
tive, and looked about them for a place of refuge. Some took
ship and sought entry into Genoa and other Italian ports;
they were refused, and sailed on in growing misery and disease
till they reached the coast of Africa, where many of them
were murdered for the jewels they were believed to have
swallowed. A few were received into Venice, which knew how
much of its maritime ascendency it owed to its Jews. Others
financed the voyage of Columbus, a man perhaps of their own
race, hoping that the great navigator would find them a new
home. A large number of them embarked in the frail vessels
of that day and sailed up the Atlantic, between hostile England
and hostile France, to find at last some measure of welcome
in little big-souled Holland. Among these was a family of
Portuguese Jews named Espinoza.

Thereafter Spain decayed, and Holland prospered. The
Jews built their first synagogue in Amsterdam in 1598; and
when, seventy-five years later, they built another, the most
magnificent in Europe, their Christian neighbors helped them
to finance the enterprise. The Jews were happy now, if we
may judge from the stout content of the merchants and rabbis
to whom Rembrandt has given immortality. But towards the
middle of the seventeenth century the even tenor of events was
interrupted by a bitter controversy within the synagogue.
Uriel a Costa, a passionate youth who had felt, like some other
Jews, the sceptical influence of the Renaissance, wrote a
treatise vigorously attacking the belief in another life. This
negative attitude was not necessarily contrary to older Jewish
doctrine; but the Synagogue compelled him to retract
publicly, lest it should incur the disfavor of a community that
had welcomed them generously, but would be unappeasably
hostile to any heresy striking so sharply at what was con-
sidered the very essence of Christianity. The formula of re-
traction and penance required the proud author to lie down
athwart the threshold of the synagogue while the members
of the congregation walked over his body. Humiliated be-

164 TOE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY

yond sufferance, Uriel went home, wrote a fierce denunciation
of his persecutors, and shot himself. 1

This was in 1647. At that time Baruch Spinoza, “the
greatest Jew of modern times,” 2 and the greatest of modem
philosophers, was a lad of fifteen, the favorite student of the
synagogue.

#. The Education of Spinoza

It was this Odyssey of the Jews that filled the background
of Spinoza’s mind, and made him irrevocably, however excom-
municate, a Jew. Though his father was a successful mer-
chant, the youth had no leaning to such a career, and pre-
ferred to spend his time in and around the synagogue, absorb-
ing the religion and the history of his people. He was a
brilliant scholar, and the elders looked upon him as a future
light of their community and their faith. Very soon he
passed from the Bible itself to the exactingly subtle com-
mentaries of the Talmud; and from these to the writings of
Maimonides, Levi ben Gerson, Ibn Ezra, and Hasdai Crescas ;
and his promiscuous voracity extended even to the mystical
philosophy of Ibn Gebirol and the Cabbalistic intricacies of
Moses of Cordova.

He was struck by the latter’s identification of God and the
universe; he followed up the idea in Ben Gerson, who taught
the eternity of the world ; and in Hasdai Crescas, who believed
the universe of matter to be the body of God. He read in
Maimonides a half-favorable discussion of the doctrine of
Averroes, that immortality is impersonal ; but he found in the
Guide to the Perplexed more perplexities than guidance.
For the great Rabbi propounded more questions than he an-
swered ; and Spinoza found the contradictions and improbabili-
ties of the Old Testament lingering in his thought long after
the solutions of Maimonides had dissolved into forgetfulness.

iGutzkow has turned this story into a drama which still finds place in
European repertoires.

2 Renan, Marc Aurkle; Paris, Calmann-Levy: p. 65.

SPINOZA

165

The cleverest defenders of a faith are its greatest enemies;
for their subtleties engender doubt and stimulate the mind.
And if this was so with the writings of Maimonides, so much
the more was it the case with the commentaries of Ibn Ezra,
where the problems of the old faith were more directly ex-
pressed, and sometimes abandoned as unanswerable. The
more Spinoza read and pondered, the more his simple cer-
tainties melted away into wondering and doubt.

His curiosity was aroused to inquire what the thinkers of
the Christian world had written on those great questions of
God and human destiny. He took up the study of Latin with
a Dutch scholar, Van den Ende, and moved into a wider
sphere of experience and knowledge. His new teacher was
something of a heretic himself, a critic of creeds and govern-
ments, an adventurous fellow who stepped out of his library to
join a conspiracy against the king of France, and adorned
a scaffold in 1674. He had a pretty daughter who became
the successful rival of Latin for the affections of Spinoza;
even a modern collegian might be persuaded to study Latin
by such inducements. But the young lady was not so much
of an intellectual as to be blind to the main chance ; and when
another suitor came, bearing costly presents, she lost interest
in Spinoza. No doubt it was at that moment that our hero
became a philosopher.

At any rate he had conquered Latin; and through Latin
he entered into the heritage of ancient and medieval European
thought. He seems to have studied Socrates and Plato and
Aristotle ; but he preferred to them the great atomists,
Democritus, Epicurus and Lucretius ; and the Stoics left their
mark upon him ineffaceably. He read the Scholastic phi-
losophers, and took from them not only their terminology, but
their geometrical method of exposition by axiom, definition,
proposition, proof, scholium and corollary. He studied
Bruno (1548—1600), that magnificent rebel whose fires “not
all the snows of the Caucasus could quench,” who wandered
from country to country and from creed to creed, and ever-

166

THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY

more “came out by the same door wherein he went,” — search-
ing and wondering ; and who at last was sentenced by the
Inquisition to be killed “as mercifully as possible, and without
the shedding of blood” — i. e., to be burned alive. What a
wealth of ideas there was in this romantic Italian! First of
all the master idea of unity: all reality is one in substance,
one in cause, one in origin; and God and this reality are one.
Again, to Bruno, mind and matter are one; every particle of
reality is composed inseparably of the physical and the
psychical. The object of philosophy, therefore, is to per-
ceive unity in diversity, mind in matter, and matter in mind;
to find the synthesis in which opposites and contradictions
meet and merge ; to rise to that highest knowledge of universal
unity which is the intellectual equivalent of the love of God.
Every one of these ideas became part of the intimate structure
of Spinoza’s thought.

Finally and above all, he was influenced by Descartes
(1596-1650), father of the subjective and idealistic (as was
Bacon of the objective and realistic) tradition in modern phi-
losophy. To his French followers and English enemies the
central notion in Descartes was the primacy of consciousness —
his apparently obvious proposition that the mind knows itself
more immediately and directly than it can ever know anything
else; that it knows the “external world” only through that
world’s impress upon the mind in sensation and perception;
that all philosophy must in consequence (though it should
doubt everything else) begin with the individual mind and
self, and make its first argument in three words: “I think,
therefore I am” ( Cogito , ergo sum). Perhaps there was
something of Renaissance individualism in this starting-point ;
certainly there was in it a whole magician’s-hat-full of conse-
quences for later speculation. Now began the great game
of epistemology, 1 which in Leibniz, Locke, Berkeley, Hume

1 Epistemology means, etymologically, the logic (logos) of understanding
){e i pi-steme) i — i. e., the origin, nature and validity of knowledge.

SPINOZA 167

'.tod Kant waxed into a Three Hundred Years’ War that at
once stimulated and devastated modern philosophy.

But this side of Descartes’ thought did not interest Spi- 1
noza; he would not lose himself in the labyrinths of epis.-
temology. What attracted him was Descartes’ conception cf
a homogeneous “substance” underlying all forms of matter,
and another homogeneous substance underlying all forms of
mind; this separation of reality into two ultimate substances
was a challenge to the unifying passion of Spinoza, and
acted like a fertilizing sperm upon the accumulations of his
thought. What attracted him again was Descartes’ desire to
explain all of the world except God and the soul by mechanical
and mathematical laws, — an idea going back to Leonardo and
Galileo, and perhaps reflecting the development of machinery
and industry in the cities of Italy. Given an initial push by
God, said Descartes (very much as Anaxagoras had said two
thousand years before), and the rest of astronomic, geologic
and all non-mental processes and developments can be ex-
plained from a homogeneous substance existing at first in a
disintegrated form (the “nebular hypothesis” of Laplace and
Kant) ; and every movement of every animal, and even of the
human body, is a mechanical movement, — the circulation of
the blood, for example, and reflex action. All the world, and
every body, is a machine; but outside the world is God, and
within the body is the spiritual soul.

Here Descartes stopped ; but Spinoza eagerly passed on.

3. Excommunication

These were the mental antecedents of the externally quiet
but internally disturbed youth who in 1656 (he had been
born in 1632) was summoned before the elders of the
synagogue on the charge of heresy. Was it true, they asked
him, that he had said to his friends that God might have a
body — the world of matter; that angels might be hallucina-

THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY

168

tions; that the soul might be merely life; and that the Old
Testament said nothing of immortality?

We do not know what he answered. We only know that
he was offered an annuity of $500 if he would consent to
maintain at least an external loyalty to his synagogue and his
faith; 1 that he refused the offer; and that on July 27, 1656,
he was excommunicated with all the sombre formalities of
Hebrew ritual. “During the reading of the curse, the wail-
ing and protracted note of a great horn was heard to fall in
from time to time; the lights, seen brightly burning at the
beginning of the ceremony, were extinguished one by one as
it proceeded, till at the end the last went out — typical of the
extinction of the spiritual life of the excommunicated man
— and the congregation was left in total darkness.” 2

Van Vloten has given us the formula used for excommunica-
tion : 3

The heads of the Ecclesiastical Council hereby make
known, that, already well assured of the evil opinions and
doings of Baruch d£ Espinoza, they have endeavored in sundry
ways and by various promises to turn him from his evil
courses. But as they have been unable to bring him to any
better way of thinking; on the contrary, as they are every
day better certified of the horrible heresies entertained and
avowed by him, and of the insolence with which these heresies
are promulgated and spread abroad, and many persons
worthy of credit having borne witness to these in the
presence of the said Espinoza, he has been held fully con-
victed of the same. Review having therefore been made of
the whole matter before the chiefs of the Ecclesiastical i
Council, it has been resolved, the Councillors assenting
thereto, to anathematize the said Spinoza, and to cut him
off from the people of Israel, and from the present hour to
place him in Anathema with the following malediction:

With the judgment of the angels and the sentence of the

i Graetz, History of the Jews ; New York, 1919: vol. v, p. 140.
a Willis, Benedict de Spinoza; London, 1870; p. 35.
s Translation by Willis, p. 34.

SPINOZA

160

saints, we anathematize, execrate, curse and cast out Baruch
de Espinoza, the whole of the sacred community assenting,
in presence of the sacred books with the six-hundred-and-
thirteen precepts written therein, pronouncing against him
the malediction wherewith Elisha cursed the children, and all
the maledictions written in the Book of the Law. Let him
he accursed by day, and accursed by night; let him be
accursed in his lying down, and accursed in his rising up;
accursed in going out and accursed in coming in. May the
Lord never more pardon or acknowledge him ; may the
wrath and displeasure of the Lord burn henceforth against
this man, load him with all the curses written in the Book
of the Law, and blot out his name from under the sky ; may
the Lord sever him for evil from all the tribes of Israel,
weight him with all the maledictions of the firmament con-
tained in the Book of Law ; and may all ye who are obedient
to the Lord your God be saved this day.

Hereby then are all admonished that none hold converse
with him by word of mouth, none hold communication with
him by writing ; that no one do him any service, no one abide
under the same roof with him, no one approach within four
cubits length of him, and no one read any document dictated
by him, or written by his hand.

Let us not be too quick to judge the leaders of the syna-*
gogue; for they faced a delicate situation. No doubt they
hesitated to subject themselves to the charge that they were as
intolerant of heterodoxy as the Inquisition which had exiled
them from Spain. But they felt that gratitude to their hosts
in Holland demanded the excommunication of a man whose
doubts struck at Christian doctrine quite as vitally as at
Judaism. Protestantism was not then the liberal and fluent
philosophy which it now becomes; the wars of religion had
left each group entrenched immovably in its own creed,
cherished now all the more because of the blood just shed in
its defense. What would the Dutch authorities say to a
Jewish community which repaid Christian toleration and pro-
tection by turning out in one generation an a Costa, and in

J70 THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY

the next a Spinoza? Furthermore, religious unanimity
seemed to the elders their sole means of preserving the little
Jewish group in Amsterdam from disintegration, and almost
the last means of preserving the unity, and so ensuring the
survival, of the scattered Jews of the world. If they had had
their own state, their own civil law, their own establishments
of secular force and power, to compel internal cohesion and
external respect, they might have been more tolerant; but
their religion was to them their patriotism as well as their
faith, the synagogue was their center of social and political
life as well as of ritual and worship; and the Bible whose
veracity Spinoza had impugned was the “portable Father-
land” of their people ; under these circumstances, they thought,
heresy was treason, and toleration suicide.

One feels that they should have bravely run these risks;
but it is as hard to judge another justly as it is to get out
of one’s skin. Perhaps 1 Menasseh ben Israel, spiritual head,
of the whole Amsterdam community of Jews, could have
found some conciliatory formula within which both the syna-
gogue and the philosopher might have found room to live in
mutual peace; but the great rabbi was then in London,
persuading Cromwell to open England to the Jews. Fate had
written that Spinoza should belong to the world.

If,. Retirement and Death

He took the excommunication with quiet courage, saying:
“It compels me to nothing which I should not have done in
any case.” But this was whistling in the dark ; itL truth the
young student now found himself bitterly and pitilessly alone.
Nothing is so terrible as solitude; and few forms of it so
difficult as the isolation of a Jew from all his people. Spi-
noza had already suffered in the loss of his old faith; to so
uproot the contents of one’s mind is a major operation, and
leaves many wounds. Had Spinoza entered another fold,

i As suggested by Israel Abrahams, art. Jews , Encyclopedia Britannica,

SPINOZA

171

embraced another of the orthodoxies in which men were
grouped like kine huddling together for warmth, he might
have found in the role of distinguished convert some of the
life which he had lost by being utterly outcast from his family
and his race. But he joined no other sect, and lived his life
alone. His father, who had looked forward to his son’s pre-
eminence in Hebrew learning, sent him away ; his sister tried
to cheat him of a small inheritance ; 1 his former friends
shunned him. No wonder there is little humor in Spinoza !
And no wonder he breaks out with some bitterness occasionally
when he thinks of the Keepers of the Law.

Those who wish to seek out the causes of miracles, and
to understand the things of nature as philosophers, and not
to stare at them in astonishment like fools, are soon con-
sidered heretical and impious, and proclaimed as such by
those whom the mob adore as the interpreters of nature
and the gods. For these men know that once ignorance is
put aside, that wonderment would be taken away which is
the only means by which their authority is preserved . 2

The culminating experience came shortly after the excom-
munication. One night as Spinoza was walking through the
streets, a pious ruffian bent on demonstrating his theology by
murder, attacked the young student with drawn dagger.
Spinoza, turning quickly, escaped with a slight wound on the
neck. Concluding that there are few places in this world
where it is safe to be a philosopher, he went to live in a quiet
attic room on the Outerdek road outside of Amsterdam. It
was now, probably, that he changed his name from Baruch to
Benedict. His host and hostess were Christians of the Men-
nonite sect, and could in some measure understand a heretic.
They liked his sadly kind face (those who have suffered much
become very bitter or very gentle), and were delighted when,
occasionally, he would come down of an evening, smoke his

IHe contested the case in court; won it; and then turned over the bequest
to the sister.

2 Ethics, Part I, Appendix.

THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY

m

pipe with them, and tune his talk to their simple strain. He
made his living at first by teaching children in Van den
Ende’s school, and then by polishing lenses, as if he had an
inclination for dealing with refractory material. He had
learned the optical trade while living in the Jewish community;
it was in accord with Hebrew canon that every student should
acquire some manual art; not only because study and honest
teaching can seldom make a livelihood, but, as Gamaliel had
said, work keeps one virtuous, whereas “every learned man
who fails to acquire a trade will at last turn out a rogue.”

Five years later (1660) his host moved to Rhynsburg, near
Leyden ; and Spinoza moved with him. The house still stands,
and the road bears the philosopher’s name. These were years
of plain living and high thinking. Many times he stayed in
his room for two or three days together, seeing nobody, and
having his modest meals brought up to him . The lenses
were well done, but not so continuously as to earn for Spinoza
more than merely enough; he loved wisdom too much to be
a “successful” man. Colerus, who followed Spinoza in these
lodgings, and wrote a short life of the philosopher from the
reports of those who had known him, says, “He was very
careful to cast up his accounts every quarter; which he did
that he might spend neither more nor less than what , he had
to spend for each year. And he would say sometimes, to the
people of the house, that he was like the serpent who forms a
circle with his tail in his mouth; to denote that he had nothing
left at the year’s end.” 1 But in his modest way he was
happy. To one who advised him to trust in revelation rather
than in reason, he answered: “Though I were at times to
find the fruit unreal which I gather by my natural understand-
ing, yet this would not make me otherwise than content; be-
cause in the gathering I am happy, and pass my days not in
sighing and sorrow, but in peace, serenity and joy.” 2 “If
Napoleon had been as intelligent as Spinoza,” says a great

1 In Pollock, Life and Philosophy of Spinoza; London, 1899; p. 393.

2 Epistle 84, ed. Willis.

SPINOZA 179

sage, “he would have lived in a garret and written four
books.” 1

To the portraits of Spinoza which have come down to us
we may add a word of description from Colerus. “He was
of a middle size. He had good features in his face, the skin
somewhat black, the hair dark and curly, the eyebrows long
and black, so that one might easily know by his looks that he
was descended from Portuguese Jews. As for his clothes, he
was very careless of them, and they were not better than those
of the meanest citizen. One of the most eminent councillors
of state went to see him, and found him in a very untidy
morning-gown; whereupon the councillor reproached him for
it, and offered him another. Spinoza answered that a man
was never the better for having a fine gown, and added, ‘It is
unreasonable to wrap up things of little or no value in a
precious cover.’ ” 2 Spinoza’s sartorial philosophy was not
always so ascetic. “It is not a disorderly or slovenly carriage
that makes us sages,” he writes; “for affected indifference to
personal appearance is rather evidence of a poor spirit in which
true wisdom could find no worthy dwelling-place, and science
could only meet with disorder and disarray.” 8

It was during this five years’ stay at Rhynsburg that Spi-
noza wrote the little fragment “On the Improvement of the
Intellect” ( De Intellectus Emendatione) , and the Ethics
Geometrically Demonstrated ( Ethica More Geometrico De-
monstrata) . The latter was finished in 1665 ; but for ten
years Spinoza made no effort to publish it. In 1668 Adrian
Koerbagh, for printing opinions similar to Spinoza’s, was
sent to jail for ten years; and died there after serving
eighteen months of his sentence. When, in 1675, Spinoza
went to Amsterdam trusting that he might now safely publish
his chef-d’oeuvre, “a rumor was spread about,” as he writes
to his friend Oldenburg, “that a book of mine was soon to

Anatole Frances M. Bergeret in Farit; New York, 1921} p. 180.

2 In Pollock, p. 394.

2 In Willis, p. 72.

174

THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY

appear, in which I endeavored to prove that there is no God.
This report, I regret to add, was by many received as true.
Certain theologians (who probably were themselves the author
of the rumor) took occasion upon this to lodge a complaint
against me with the prince and the magistrates. . . . Hav-
ing received a hint of this state of things from some trust-
worthy friends, who assured me, further, that the theologians
Were everywhere lying in wait for me, I determined to put
off my attempted publication until such time as I should see
what turn affairs would take.” 1

Only after Spinoza’s death did the Ethics appear (1677),
along with an unfinished treatise on politics ( Tractatus
Politicus) and a Treatise on the Rainbow. All these works
were in Latin, as the universal language of European phi-
losophy and science in the seventeenth century. A Short
Treatise on God a/nd Man, written in Dutch, was discovered
by Van Vloten in 1852; it was apparently a preparatory
sketch for the Ethics. The only books published by Spinoza
in his lifetime were The Principles of the Cartesian Philosophy
(1663), and A Treatise on Religion and the State ( Tractatus
Theologico-Politicus) , which appeared anonymously in 1670.
It was at once honored with a place in the Index Expur ga-
torius, and its sale was prohibited by the civil authorities ; with
this assistance it attained to a considerable circulation under
cover of title-pages which disguised it as a medical treatise
or an historical narrative. Countless volumes were written to
refute it; one called Spinoza “the most impious atheist that
ever lived upon the face of the earth” ; Colerus speaks of an-
other refutation as “a treasure of infinite value, which shall
never perish” ; 2 — only this notice remains of it. In addition to
such public chastisement Spinoza received a number of letters
intended to reform him ; that of a former pupil, Albert Burgh,
who had been converted to Catholicism, may be taken as a
sample :

1 Epistle 19.

2 Pollock, 406.

SPINOZA

178

You assume that you have at last found the true philoso-
phy. How do you know that your philosophy is the best of
all those which have ever been taught in the world, are now
taught, or shall be taught hereafter? To say nothing of
what may be devised in the future, have you examined all
those philosophies, both ancient and modern, which are
taught here, in India, and all the world over? And even
supposing that you have duly examined them, how do you
know that you have chosen the best? . . . How dare you
set yourself up above all the patriarchs, prophets, apostles,
martyrs, doctors, and confessors of the Church? Miserable
man and worm upon the earth that you are, yea, ashes and
food for worms, how can you confront the eternal wisdom
with your unspeakable blasphemy? What foundation have
you for this rash, insane, deplorable, accursed doctrine?
What devilish pride puffs you up to pass judgment on
mysteries which Catholics themselves declare to be incom-
prehensible? Etc., etc . 1

To which Spinoza replied:

You who assume that you have at last found the best
religion, or rather the best teachers, and fixed your
credulity upon them, how do you know that they are the
best among those who have taught religions, or now
teach, or shall hereafter teach them? Have you ex-
amined all those religions, ancient and modem, which are
taught here, and in India, and all the world over? And
even supposing that you have duly examined them, how do
you know that you have chosen the best? 2

Apparently the gentle philosopher could be firm enough when
occasion called for it.

Not all the letters were of this uncomfortable kind. Many
of them were from men of mature culture and high position.
Most prominent of these correspondents were Henry Olden-
burg, secretary of the recently established Royal Society of
England; Von Tschirnhaus, a young German inventor and

1 Epistle 73.

2 Epistle 74.

176

/

THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY

nobleman; Huygens, the Dutch scientist; Leibnitz the phi-
losopher, who visited Spinoza in 1676; Louis Meyer, a phy-
sician of the Hague; and Simon De Vries, a rich merchant of
Amsterdam. The latter so admired Spinoza that he begged
him to accept a gift of $1000. Spinoza refused; and later,
when De Vries, making his will, proposed to leave his entire
fortune to him, Spinoza persuaded De Vries instead to be-
queath his wealth to his brother. When the merchant died it
was found that his will required that an annuity of $250
should be paid to Spinoza out of the income of the property.
Spinoza wished again to refuse saying, “Nature is satisfied
with little ; and if she is, I am also” ; but he was at last pre-
vailed upon to accept $150 a year. Another friend, Jan de
Witt, chief magistrate of the Dutch republic, gave him a state
annuity of $50. Finally, the Grand Monarch himself,
Louis XIV, offered him a substantial pension, with the implied
condition that Spinoza should dedicate his next book to the
King. Spinoza courteously declined.

To please his friends and correspondents, Spinoza moved to
Voorburg, a suburb of the Hague, in 1665; and in 1670 to
the Hague itself. During these later years he developed an
affectionate intimacy with Jan de Witt; and when De Witt
and his brother were murdered in the streets by a mob which
believed them responsible for the defeat of the Dutch troops
by the French in 1672, Spinoza, on being apprised of the
infamy, burst into tears, and but for the force which was
used to restrain him, would have sallied forth, a second
Antony, to denounce the crime on the spot where it had been
committed. Not long afterward, the Prince de Conde, head
of the invading French army, invited Spinoza to his head-
quarters, to convey to him the offer of a royal pension from
France and to introduce certain admirers of Spinoza who
were with the Prince. Spinoza, who seems to have been rather
a “good European” than a nationalist, thought it nothing
strange for him to cross the lines and go to Conde’s camp.
When he returned to the Hague the news of his visit spread

SPINOZA

177

about, and there were angry murmurs among the people.
Spinoza’s host, Van den Spyek, was in fear of an attack upon
his house; but Spinoza calmed him, saying: “I can easily
clear myself of all suspicion of treason; . . . but should the
people show the slightest disposition to molest you, should
they even assemble and make a noise before your house, I will
go down to them, though they should serve me as they did
poor De Witt.” 1 But when the crowd learned that Spinoza
was merely a philosopher they concluded that he must be harm-
less; and the commotion quieted down.

Spinoza’s life, as we see it in these little incidents, was not
as impoverished and secluded as it has been traditionally pic-
tured. He had some degree of economic security, he had in-
fluential and congenial friends, he took an interest in the
political issues of his time, and he was not without adventures
that came dose to being matters of life and death. That he
had made his way, despite excommunication and interdict, into
the respect of his contemporaries, appears from the offer
which came to him, in 1673, of the chair of philosophy at
the University of Heidelberg; an offer couched in the most
complimentary terms, and promising “the most perfect free-
dom in philosophizing, which His Highness feels assured you
would not abuse by calling in question the established religion
of the state.” Spinoza replied characteristically:

Honored sir: Had it ever been my wish to undertake the
duties of a professor in any faculty, my desires would have
been amply gratified in accepting the position which his
Serene Highness the Prince Palatine does me the honor to
offer me through you. The offer, too, is much enhanced
in value in my eyes by the freedom of philosophizing attached
to it. . . . But I do not know within what precise limits
that the same liberty of philosophizing would have to be
restrained, so that I would not seem to interfere with the
established religion of the principality. ... You see, there-
fore, honored sir, that I do not look for any higher worldly

i Willis, 67.

178

THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY

position than that which I now enjoy ; and that for love of
the quiet which I think I cannot otherwise secure, I
must abstain from entering upon the career of a public
teacher. . . .*

The closing chapter came in 1677. Spinoza was now only
forty-four, but his friends knew that he had not many years
left to him. He had come of consumptive parentage; and
the comparative confinement in which he had lived, as well as
the dust-laden atmosphere in which he had labored, were not
calculated to correct this initial disadvantage. More and
more he suffered from difficulty in breathing ; year by year
his sensitive lungs decayed. He reconciled himself to an
early end, and feared only that the book which he had not
dared to publish during his lifetime would be lost or destroyed
after his death. He placed the MS. in a small writing desk,
locked it, and gave the key to his host, asking him to transmit
desk and key to Jan Rieuwertz, the Amsterdam publisher,
when the inevitable should come.

On Sunday, February 20, the family with whom Spinoza
lived went to church after receiving his assurance that he was
not unusually ill. Dr. Meyer alone remained with him.
When they returned they found the philosopher lying dead
in the arms of his friend. Many mourned him; for the
simple folk had loved him as much for his gentleness as the
learned had honored him for his wisdom. Philosophers and
magistrates joined the people in following him to his final
rest; and men of varied faiths met at his grave.

Nietzsche says somewhere that the last Christian died upon
the cross. He had forgotten Spinoza.

n. THE TREATISE ON RELIGION AND TEE STATE

Let us study his four books in the order in which he wrote
them. The Tractatus Theologico-Politicus is perhaps the
least interesting of them to us today, because the movement
* Epistle 54.

SPINOZA

rm

ef higher criticism which Spinoza initiated has made into
platitudes the propositions for which Spinoza risked his life.
It is unwise of an author to prove his point too thoroughly ;
his conclusions pass into the currency of all educated minds,
and his works no longer have that mystery about them which
draws us ever on. So it has been with Voltaire ; and so with
Spinoza’s treatise on religion and the state.

The essential principle of the book is that the language
of the Bible is deliberately metaphorical or allegorical; not
only because it partakes of the Oriental tendency to high
literary color and ornament, and exaggerated descriptive ex-
pressions ; but because, too, the prophets and the apostles, to
convey their doctrine by arousing the imagination, were com-
pelled to adapt themselves to the capacities and predisposi-
tions of the popular mind. “All Scripture was written
primarily for an entire people, and secondarily for the whole
human race; consequently its contents must necessarily be
adapted, as far as possible, to the understanding of Hie
masses .” 1 “Scripture does not explain things by their sec-
ondary causes, but only narrates them in the order and style
which has most power to move men, and especially uneducated
men, to devotion. ... Its object is not to convince the reason,
hut to attract and lay hold of the imagination.” 2 Hence the
abundant miracles and the repeated appearances of God.
“The masses think that the power and providence of God are
most clearly displayed by events that are extraordinary, and
contrary to the conception which they have formed of nature.
. . . They suppose, indeed, that God is inactive so long as
nature works in her accustomed order; and vice versa , that
the power of nature, and natural causes, are idle so long
as God is acting; thus they imagine two powers distinct from
one another, the power of God and the power of nature.” 3
(Here enters the basic idea of Spinoza’s philosophy — -that

1 Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, ch. 5.

* Ch. 6.

*IWd.

180

THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY

God and the processes of nature are one.) Men love to believe
that God breaks the natural order of events for them ; so the
Jews gave a miraculous interpretation of the lengthening of
the day in order to impress others (and perhaps themselves)
with the conviction that the Jews were the favorites of God;
and similar incidents abound in the early history of every
people . 1 Sober and literal statements do not move the
soul; if Moses had said that it was merely the East wind (as
We gather from a later passage) that cleared a path for them
through the Red Sea, it would have made little impression on
the minds of the masses he was leading. Again, the apostles
resorted to miracle stories for the same reason that they re-
sorted to parables; it was a necessary adaptation to the public
mind. The greater influence of such men as compared with
philosophers and scientists is largely attributable to the vivid
and metaphorical forms of speech which the founders of reli-
gion, by the nature of their mission and their own emotional
intensity, are driven to adopt.

Interpreted on this principle, the Bible, says Spinoza,
contains nothing contrary to reason . 2 But interpreted lit-
erally, it is full of errors, contradictions, and obvious im ■
possibilities — as that the Pentateuch was written by Moses.
The more philosophical interpretation reveals, through the'
mist of allegory and poetry, ; the profound thought of great
thinkers and leaders, and makes intelligible the persistence of
the Bible and its immeasurable influence upon men. Both
interpretations have a proper place and function: the people
will always demand a religion phrased in imagery and haloed
with the supernatural; if one such form of faith is destroyed
they will create another. But the philosopher knows that
God and nature are one being, acting by necessity and ac-
cording to invariable law; it is this majestic Law which he
will reverence and obey . 8 He knows that in the Scriptures

1 ibid.

2 Introd.

8Ch.fi.

SJPINOZA

181

“God is described as a law-giver or prince, and styled just,
merciful, etc., merely in concession to the understanding of
the people and their imperfect knowledge; that in reality
God acts ... by the necessity of his nature, and his
decrees . . . are eternal truths.” 1

Spinoza makes no separation between Old and New. Testa-
ment, and looks upon the Jewish and the Christian religion .
as one, when popular hatred and misunderstandings are laid
aside, and philosophical interpretation finds the hidden core
and essence of the rival faiths. “I have often wondered that
persons who make boast of professing the Christian religion
— namely, love, joy, peace, temperance, and charity to all
men- — should quarrel with such rancorous animosity, and dis-
play daily toward one another such bitter hatred, that this,
rather than the virtues which they profess, is the readiest cri-
terion of their faith.” 2 * The Jews have survived chiefly be-
cause of Christian hatred of them; persecution gave them the
unity and solidarity necessary for continued racial existence;
without persecution they might have mingled and married
with the peoples of Europe, and been engulfed in the major-
ities with which they were everywhere surrounded. But there
is no reason why the philosophic Jew and the philosophic
Christian, when all nonsense is discarded, should not agree
sufficiently in creed to live in peace and cooperation.

The first step toward this consummation, Spinoza thinks,
would be a mutual understanding about Jesus. Let improb-
able dogmas be withdrawn, and the Jews would soon recog-
nize in Jesus the greatest and noblest of the prophets. Spi-
noza does not accept the divinity of Christ, but he puts him
first among men. “The eternal wisdom of God . . . has
shown itself forth in all things, but chiefly in the mind of
man, and most of all in Jesus Christ.” 8 “Christ was sent to
teach not only the Jews, but the whole human race” ; hence “he

1 Ch. 4.

*Ch. 6.

* Epistle 21.

182

THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY

accommodated himself to the comprehension of the people v * .
and most often taught by parables.” 1 He considers that the
ethics of Jesus are almost synonymous with wisdom; in rever-
encing him one rises to “the intellectual love of God.” So
noble a figure, freed from the impediment of dogmas that lead
only to divisions and disputes, would draw all men to him;
and perhaps in his name a world torn with suicidal wars of
tongue and sword might find a unity of faith and a possibility
of brotherhood at last.

m. THE IMPROVEMENT OP THE INTEEEECT

Opening Spinoza’s next book, we come at the outset upon
one of the gems of philosophic literature. Spinoza tells why
he gave up everything for philosophy :

After experience had taught me that all things which fre-
quently take place in ordinary life are vain and futile, and
when I saw that all the things I feared, and which feared
me, had nothing good or bad in them save in so far as the
mind was affected by them ; I determined at last to inquire
whether there was anything which might be truly good, and
able to communicate its goodness, and by which the mind
might be affected to the exclusion of all other things; I
determined, I say, to inquire whether I might discover and
attain the faculty of enjoying throughout eternity con-
tinual supreme happiness. ... I could see the many ad-
vantages acquired from honor and riches, and that I should
be debarred from acquiring these things if I wished seriously
to investigate a new matter. ... But the more one pos-
sesses of either of them, the more the pleasure is increased,
and the more one is in consequence encouraged to increase
them; whereas if at any time our hope is frustrated, there
arises in us the deepest pain. Fame has also this great
drawback, that if we pursue it we must direct our lives in
such a way as to please the fancy of men, avoiding what
they dislike and seeking what pleases them. . . . Blit the

iCh. 4.

SPINOZA

183

love towards a thing eternal and infinite alone feeds the
mind with a pleasure secure from all pain. . . . The greatest
good is the knowledge of the union which the mind has with
the whole of nature. . . . The more the mind knows, the
better it understands its forces and the order of nature ; the
more it understands its forces or strength, the better it will
be able to direct itself and lay down the rules for itself ; and
the more it understands the order of nature, the more easily
it will be able to liberate itself from useless things; this is
the whole method.

Only knowledge, then, is power and freedom; and the only
permanent happiness is the pursuit of knowledge and the joy
of understanding. Meanwhile, however, the philosopher must
remain a man and a citizen; what shall be his mode of life
during his pursuit of truth? Spinoza lays down a simple rule
of conduct to which, so far as we know, his actual behavior
thoroughly conformed :

1. To speak in a manner comprehensible to the people,
and to do for them all things that do not prevent us from
attaining our ends. . . , 2. To enjoy only such pleasures
as are necessary for the preservation of health. 3. Finally,
to seek only enough money ... as is necessary for the
maintenance of our life and health, and to comply with such
customs as are not opposed to what we seek. 1

But in setting out upon such a quest, the honest and clear-
headed philosopher comes at once upon the problem: How
do I know that my knowledge is knowledge, that my senses
can be trusted in the material which they bring to my reason,
and that my reason can he trusted with the conclusions which
it derives from the material of sensation? Should we not ex-
amine the vehicle before abandoning ourselves to its direc-
tions? Should we not do all that we can to perfect it? ‘Tie-
fore all things,” says Spinoza, Baconianly, “a means must
be devised for improving and clarifying the intellect.” 2 We

1 De Emendatione 9 Everyman edition, p. 281.

2 Ibid.

184

THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY

must distinguish carefully the various forms of knowledge,
and trust only the best.

First, then, there is hearsay knowledge, by which, for ex-
ample, I know the day of my birth. Second, vague expe-
rience, “empirical” knowledge in the derogatory sense, as when
a physician knows a cure not by any scientific formulation of
experimental tests, but by a “general impression” that it has
“usually” worked. Third, immediate deduction, or knowl-
edge reached by reasoning, as when I conclude to the immen-
sity of the sun from seeing that in the case of other objects
distance decreases the apparent size. This kind of knowl-
edge is superior to the other two, but is yet precariously sub-
ject to sudden refutation by direct experience; so science for
a hundred years reasoned its way to an “ether” which is now
in high disfavor with the physicist elite. Hence the highest
kind of knowledge is the fourth form, which comes by imme-
diate deduction and direct perception, as when we see at once
that 6 is the missing number in the proportion, 2 :4 : :3 :x ; or
as when we perceive that the whole is greater than the part.
Spinoza believes that men versed in mathematics know most
of Euclid in this intuitive way; but he admits ruefully that
“the things which I have been able to know by this knowledge
so far have been very few.” 1

In the j Ethics Spinoza reduces the first two forms of knowl-
edge to one; and calls intuitive knowledge a perception of
things sub specie eternitatis — in their eternal aspects and rela-
tions, — which gives in a phrase a definition of philosophy.
Scientia intuitiva, therefore, tries to find behind things and
events their laws and eternal relations. Hence Spinoza’s very
fundamental distinction (the basis of his entire system) be-
tween the “temporal order” — the “world” of things and inci-
dents — and the “eternal order” — the world of laws and struc-
ture. Let us study this distinction carefully;

It must be noted that I do not understand here by the

series of causes and real entities a series of individual mutable
»P. 233.

SPINOZA

185

things, but rather the series of fixed and eternal, things.
For it would be impossible for human weakness to follow
up the series of individual mutable things, not only because
their number surpasses all count, but because of the many
circumstances, in one and the same thing, each of which may
be the cause of the thing’s existence. For indeed, the exist-
ence of particular things has no connection with their es-
sence, and is not an eternal truth. However, there is no
need that we should understand the series of individual
mutable things, for their essence ... is only to be found
in fixed and eternal things, and from the laws inscribed in
those things as their true codes, according to which all in-
dividual things are made and arranged ; nay, these individual
and mutable things depend so intimately and essentially on
these fixed ones that without them they can neither exist
nor be conceived . 1

If we will keep this passage in mind as we study Spinoza’s
masterpiece, it will itself be clarified, and much in the Ethict
that is discouragingly complex will unravel itself into sinr
plicity and understanding.

IV. THE ETHICS

The most precious production in modern philosophy is cast
into geometrical form, to make the thought Euclideanly clear ;
but the result is a laconic obscurity in which every line re-
quires a Talmud of commentary. The Scholastics had formu-
lated their thought so, but never so pithily ; and they had been
helped to clarity by their fore-ordained conclusions. Descartes
had suggested that philosophy could not be exact until it ex-
pressed itself in the forms of mathematics ; but he had never
grappled with his own ideal. Spinoza came to the suggestion
with a mind trained in mathematics as the very basis of all

ip. 259. Cf. Bacon, Novum Orgatvum, II, 2: “For although nothing exists
In nature except individual bodies, exhibiting clear individual effects ac-
cording to particular laws; yet, in each branch of learning, those very laws —
their investigation, discovery and development — are the foundation both
of theory and of practice.” Fundamentally, all philosophers agree.

186

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rigorous scientific procedure,; and impressed with the achieve-
ments of Copernicus, Kepler and Galileo. To our more loosely
textured minds the result is an exhausting concentration of both
matter and form ; and we are tempted to console ourselves by
denouncing this philosophic geometry as an artificial chess-
game of thought in which axioms, definitions, theorems and
proofs are manipulated like kings and bishops, knights and
pawns; a logical solitaire invented to solace Spinoza’s loneli-
ness. Order is against the grain of our minds; we prefer to
follow the straggling lines of fantasy, and to weave our philos-
ophy precariously out of our dreams. But Spinoza had but
one compelling desire — to reduce the intolerable chaos of the
world to unity and order. He had the northern hunger for
truth rather than the southern lust for beauty ; the artist in
him was purely an architect, building a system of thought to
perfect symmetry and form.

Again, the modem student will stumble and grumble over
the terminology of Spinoza. Writing in Latin, he was com-
pelled to express his essentially modern thought in medieval
and scholastic terms; there was no other language of philos-
ophy which would then have been understood. So he uses
the term substance where we should write reality or essence ;
perfect where we should Write complete ; ideal for our object;
objectively for subjectively, and formally for objectively.
These are hurdles in the race, which will deter the weakling
but will stimulate the strong.

In short, Spinoza is not to be read, he is to be studied;
you must approach him as you would approach Euclid, recog-
nizing that in these brief two hundred pages a man has written
down his lifetime’s thought with stoic sculptury of everything
superfluous. Do not think to find its core by running over
it rapidly; never in a work of philosophy was there so little
that could be skipped without loss. . Every part depends upon
preceding parts ; some obvious and apparently needless prop-
osition turns out to be the cornerstone of an imposing develop-
ment of logic. You will not understand any important sec-

SPINOZA.

187

tion thoroughly till you have read and pondered the whole;
though one need not say, with Jacobi’s enthusiastic exaggera-
tion, that “no one has understood Spinoza to whom a single
line of the Ethics remains obscure.” “Here, doubtless,” says
Spinoza, in the second part of his book, “the reader will be-
come confused, and will recollect many things which will bring
him to a standstill; and therefore I pray him to proceed gently
with me and form no judgment concerning these things until
he shall have read alL” 1 Read the book not all at once, but
in small portions at many sittings. And having finished it,
consider that you have but begun to understand it. Read
then some commentary, like Pollock’s Spinoza , or Martineau’s
Study of Spinoza ; or, better, both. Finally, read the Ethics
again ; it will be a new book to you. When you have finished
it a second time you will remain forever a lover of philosophy.

1. Nature and God

Page one plunges us at once into the maelstrom of meta-
physics. Our modern hard-headed (or is it soft-headed?)
abhorrence of metaphysics captures us, and for a moment we
wish we were anywhere except in Spinoza. But then meta-
physics, as William James said, is nothing but an attempt to
think things out clearly to their ultimate significance, to find
their substantial essence in the scheme of reality, — or, as
Spinoza puts it, their essential substance; and thereby to
unify all truth and reach that “highest of all generalizations”
which, even to the practical Englishman, 2 constitutes philos-
ophy. Science itself, which so superciliously scorns meta-
physics, assumes a metaphysic in its every thought. It
happens that the metaphysic which it assumes is the meta-
physic of Spinoza.

There are three pivotal terms in Spinoza’s system: sub-
stance, attribute, and mode. Attribute we put aside tempo-

iPart II, proposition 11, note.

2 Spencer, First Principles x Part II, ch. 1.

188

THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY

rarily, for simplicity’s sake. A mode is any individual thing
or event, any particular form or shape, which reality tran-
siently assumes; you, your body, your thoughts, your group s
your species, your planet, are modes; all these are forms,
modes, almost literally fashions, of some eternal and invari-
able reality lying behind and beneath them.

What is this underlying reality? Spinoza calls it sub-
stance, as literally that which stands beneath. Eight genera-
tions have fought voluminous battles over the meaning of this
term ; we must not be discouraged if we fail to resolve the mat-
ter in a paragraph. One error we should guard against:
substance does not mean the constituent material of anything,
as when we speak of wood as the substance of a chair. We
approach Spinoza’s use of the word when we speak of “the
substance of his remarks.” If we go back to the Scholastic
philosophers from whom Spinoza took the term, we find that
they used it as a translation of the Greek ousia, which is the
present participle of einai, to be, and indicates the inner being
or essence. Substance then is that which is (Spinoza had not
forgotten the impressive “I am who am” of Genesis) ; that
which eternally and unchangeably is, and of which everything
else must be a transient form or mode. If now we compare
this division of the world into substance and modes with its
division, in The Improvement of the Intellect, into the eternal
order of laws and invariable relations on the one hand, and the
temporal order of time-begotten and death-destined things on
the other, we are impelled to the conclusion that Spinoza means
by substance here very nearly what he meant by the eternal
order there. Let us provisionally take it as one element in
the term substance, then, that it betokens the very structure
of existence, underlying all events and things, and constitut-
ing the essence of the world.

But further Spinoza identifies substance with nature and
God. After the manner of the Scholastics, he conceives na-
ture under a double aspect: as active and vital process, which
Spinoza calls natura naturans — nature begetting, the Sla/n

SPINOZA 189

vital and creative evolution of Bergson; and as the passive
product of this process, natura naturata — nature begotten,
the material and contents of nature, its woods and winds and
waters, its hills and fields and myriad external forms. It is
in the latter sense that he denies, and in the former sense that
he affirms, the identity of nature and substance and God.
Substance and modes, the eternal order and the temporal or-
der, active nature and passive nature, God and the world,
— all these are for Spinoza coincident and synonymous dichot-
omies; each divides the universe into essence and incident.
That substance is insubstantial, that it is form and not matter,
that it has nothing to do with that mongrel and neuter com-
posite of matter and thought which some interpreters have
supposed it to be, stands out clearly enough from this identifi-
cation of substance with creative but not with passive or ma-
terial nature. A passage from Spinoza’s correspondence may
help us :

I take a totally different view of God and Nature from
that which the later Christians usually entertain, for I hold
that God is the immanent, and not the extraneous, cause
of all things. I say, All is in God; all lives and moves in
God. And this I maintain with the Apostle Paul, and per-
haps with every one of the philosophers of antiquity, al-
though in a way other than theirs. I might even venture
to say that my view is the same as that entertained by
the Hebrews of old, if so much may be inferred from cer-
tain traditions, greatly altered or falsified though they be.

It is however a complete mistake on the part of those who
say that my purpose ... is to show that God and Nature,
under which last term they understand a certain mass of
corporeal matter, are one and the same. I had no such
intention . 1

Again, in the Treatise on Religion and the State , he writes:
*‘By the help of God I mean the fixed and unchangeable order
of nature, or the chain of natural events” ; 2 the universal laws

i Epistle 21.
sCh. 3.

THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY

190

of nature and the eternal decrees of God are one and the same
thing. “From the infinite nature of God all things . . . fol-
low by the same necessity, and in the same way, as it follows
from the nature of a triangle, from eternity to eternity, that
its three angles are equal to two right angles.” 1 What the
laws of the circle are to all circles, God is to the world. Like
substance, God is the causal chain or process, 2 the underlying
condition of all things, 8 the law and structure of the world. 4
This concrete universe of modes and things is to God as a
bridge is to its design, its structure, and the laws of mathe-
matics and mechanics according to which it is built ; these are
the sustaining basis, the underlying condition, the substance,
of the bridge; without them it would fall. And like the
bridge, the world itself is sustained by its structure and its
laws ; it is upheld in the hand of God.

The will of God and the laws of nature being one and
the same reality diversely phrased, 5 it follows that all events
are the mechanical operation of invariable laws, and not the
whim of an irresponsible autocrat seated in the stars. The
mechanism which Descartes saw in matter and body alone,
Spinoza sees in God and mind as well. It is a world of de-
terminism, not of design. Because we act for conscious ends,
we suppose that all processes have such ends in view; and
because we are human we suppose that all events lead up to
man and are designed to subserve his needs. But this is an
anthropocentric delusion, like so much of our thinking. 8 The
root of the greatest errors in philosophy lies in projecting our
Human purposes, criteria and preferences into the objective
universe. Hence our “problem of evil” : we strive to reconcile
the ills of life with the goodness of God, forgetting the lesson

1 Ethics, I, 17, note.

2 Hoff ding, History of Modern Philosophy, vol. 1.

3 Martineau, Study of Spinoza ; London, 1822, p. 171.

A Prof. Woodbridge.

« T. T-P., ch. 3.

* Ethics, Part I, Appendix.

Sx’INOZA

191

taught to Job, that God is beyond our little good and evil.
Good and bad are relative to human and often individual
tastes and ends, and have no validity for a universe in which
individuals are ephemera, and in which the Moving Finger
writes even the history of the race in water.

Whenever, then, anything in nature seems to us ridiculous,
absurd or evil, it is because we have but a partial knowledge
of things, and are in the main ignorant of the order and
coherence of nature as a whole, and because we want every-
thing to be arranged according to the dictates of our own
reason ; although in fact, what our reason pronounces bad is
not bad as regards the order and laws of universal nature,
but only as regards the laws of our own nature taken
separately . 1 ... As for the terms good and bad, they
indicate nothing positive considered in themselves. ... For
one and the same thing can at the same time be good,
bad, and indifferent. For example, music is good to the
melancholy, bad to mourners, and indifferent to the dead . 3

Bad and good are prejudices which the eternal reality can-
not recognize ; “it is right that the world should illustrate the
full nature of the infinite, and not merely the particular ideals
of man.” 3 And as with good and bad, so with the ugly and
the beautiful; these too are subjective and personal terms,
which, flung at the universe, will be returned to the sender
unhonored. “I would warn you that I do not attribute to
nature either beauty or deformity, order or confusion. Only
in relation to our imagination can things be called beautiful
or ugly, well-ordered or confused.” 4 “For example, if mo-
tion which the nerves receive by means of the eyes from ob-
jects before us is conducive of health, those objects are called
beautiful ; if it is not, those objects are called ugly.” 6 In

1 Tractatus PoUticus, ch. 2.

2 Ethics, IV. pref.

8 Santayana, Introduction to the Ethics, Everyman ed., p. xx.

4 Epistle 15, ed. Pollock.

® Ethics, I, App.

m

THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY

such passages Spinoza passes beyond Plato, who thought that
his esthetic judgments must be the laws of creation and the
eternal decrees of God.

Is God a person? Not in any human sense of this word.
Spinoza notices “the popular belief which still pictures God as
of the male, not of the female sex ” ; 1 and he is gallant enough
to reject a conception which mirrored the earthly subordina-
tion of woman to man. To a correspondent who objected to
his impersonal conception of Deity, Spinoza writes in terms
reminiscent of the old Greek sceptic Xenophanes:

When you say that if I allow not in God the operations
of seeing, hearing, observing, willing, and the like . . . you
know not what sort of God mine is, I thence conjecture that
you believe there is no greater perfection than such as can
be explained by the attributes aforesaid. I do not wonder
at it ; for I believe that a triangle, if it could speak, would
in like manner say that God is eminently triangular, and a
circle that the divine nature is eminently circular; and thus
would every one ascribe his own attributes to God . 2

Finally, “neither intellect nor will pertains to the nature at
God,” 3 in the usual sense in which these human qualities are
attributed to the Deity; but rather the will of God is the sum
of all causes and all laws, and the intellect of God is the
sum of all mind. “The mind of God,” as Spinoza conceives
it, “is all the mentality that is scattered over space and time,
the diffused consciousness that animates the world.” 4 “All
things, in however diverse degree, are animated.” 5 Life or
mind is one phase or aspect of everything that we know, as
material extension or body is another ; these are the two phases
or attributes (as Spinoza calls them) through which we per-
ceive the operation of substance or God; in this sense God —
the universal process and eternal reality behind the flux of

1 Epistle 58, ed. Willis.

2 Epistle 60, ed. Willis.

2 Ethics , I, 17, note.

4 Santayana, loc. cit., p. x.

* Ethic 8, II, 13, note?

SPINOZA

193

things — may be said to have both a mind and a body. Nei-
ther mind nor matter is God ; but the mental processes and the
molecular processes which constitute the double history of the
world — these, and their causes and their laws, are God.

2. Matter and Mind

But what is mind, and what is matter? Is the mind mate-
rial, as some unimaginative people suppose; or is the body
merely an idea, as some imaginative people suppose? Is the
mental process the cause, or the effect, of the cerebral process?
— or are they, as Malebranche taught, unrelated and inde-
pendent, and only providentially parallel?

Neither is mind material, answers Spinoza, nor is matter
mental; neither is the brain-process the cause, nor is it the
effect, of thought; nor are the two processes independent and
parallel. For there are not two processes, and there are not
two entities; there is but one process, seen now inwardly as
thought, and now outwardly as motion; there is but one en-
tity, seen now inwardly as mind, now outwardly as matter,
but in reality an inextricable mixture and unity of both.
Mind and body do not act upon each other, because they are
not other, they are one. “The body cannot determine the
mind to think ; nor the mind determine the body to remain in
motion or at rest, or in any other state,” for the simple reason
that “the decision of the mind, and the desire and determina-
tion of the body . . . are one and the same thing.” 1 And all
the world is unifiedly double in this way; wherever there is
an external “material” process, it is but one side or aspect of
the real process, which to a fuller view would be seen to include
as well an internal process correlative, in however different a
degree, with the mental process which we see within ourselves.
The inward and “mental” process corresponds at every stage
with the external and “material” process ; “the order and con-
nection of ideas is the same as the order and connection of

1 Ethics, ill, 2.

THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY

194i

things.” 1 “Thinking substance and extended substance are
one and the same thing, comprehended now through this, now
through that, attribute” or aspect. “Certain of the Jews
seem to have perceived this, though confusedly, for they said
that God and his intellect, and the things conceived by his
intellect, were one and the same thing.” 2

If “mind” be taken in a large sense to correspond with
the nervous system in all its ramifications, then every change
in the “body” will be accompanied by — or, better, form a
whole with — a correlative change in the “mind.” “Just as
thoughts and mental processes are connected and arranged in
the mind, so in the body its modifications, and the modifica-
tions of things” affecting the body through sensations, “are
arranged according to their order ” ; 8 and “nothing can happen
to the body which is not perceived by the mind,” and con-
sciously or unconsciously felt . 4 Just as the emotion as felt
is part of a whole, of which changes in the circulatory and
respiratory and digestive systems are the basis ; so an idea is a
part, along with “bodily” changes, of one complex organic
process; even the infinitesimal subtleties of mathematical re-
flection have their correlate in the body. (Have not the “be-
haviorists” proposed to detect a man’s thoughts by recording
those involuntary vibrations of the vocal cords that seem to
accompany all thinking?)

After so trying to melt away the distinction between body
and mind, Spinoza goes on to reduce to a question of degree
the difference between intellect and will. There are no “fac-
ulties” in the mind, no separate entities called intellect or will,
much less imagination or memory ; the mind is not an agency
that deals with ideas, but it is the ideas themselves in their
process and concatenation . 6 Intellect is merely an abstract

in, i7.

. * Ibid., note.

*V, 1.

*11, 12, 13.

* Fop Spinoza's anticipation of the association theory cf. II, 18, note.

SPINOZA

195

and short-hand term for a series of ideas; and will an abstract
term for a series of actions or volitions: “the intellect and the
will are related to this or that idea or volition as rockiness to
this or that rock.” 1 Finally, “will and intellect are one and
the same thing ; 2 for a volition is merely an idea which, by
richness of associations (or perhaps through the absence of
competitive ideas) , has remained long enough in consciousness
to pass over into action. Every idea becomes an action un-
less stopped in the transition by a different idea ; the idea is
itself the first stage of a unified organic process of which ex-
ternal action is the completion.

What is often called will, as the impulsive force which de-
termines the duration of an idea in consciousness, should be
called desire, — which “is the very essence of man.” 8 Desire
is an appetite or instinct of which we are conscious; but in-
stincts need not always operate through conscious desire . 4
Behind the instincts is the vague and varied effort for self-
preservation ( conatus sese preservandi ) ; Spinoza sees this in
all human and even infra-human activity, just as Schopen-
hauer and Nietzsche were to see the will to live or the will to
power everywhere. Philosophers seldom disagree.

“Everything, in so far as it is in itself, endeavors to persist
in its own being; and the endeavor wherewith a thing seeks
to persist in its own being is nothing else than the actual es-
sence of that thing ” ; 5 the power whereby a thing persists is
the core and essence of its being. Every instinct is a device
developed by nature to preserve the individual (or, as our
solitary bachelor fails to add, the species or the group.)
Pleasure and pain are the satisfaction or the hindrance of an
instinct; they are not the causes of our desires, but their

ill, 48, note.

2 II, 49, corollary.

s IV, 18.

4 Spinoza is alive to the power of the “unconscious,” as seen in somnam*
bulism (II, 2, note) ; and notes the phenomena of double personality (IV*
39, note).

e III, 6, 7.

196

THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY

results ; we do not desire things because they give us pleasure ;
but they give us pleasure because we desire them ; 1 and we
desire them because we. must.

There is, consequently, no free will ; the. necessities of sur-
vival determine instinct, instinct determines desire, and desire
determines thought and action. “The decisions of the mind
are nothing save desires, which vary according to various dis-
positions.” 2 “There is in the mind no absolute or free will;
but the mind is determined in willing this or that by a
cause which is determined in its turn by another cause, and
this by another, and so on to infinity.” 8 “Men think them-
selves free because they are conscious of their volitions and de-
sires, but are ignorant of the causes by which they are led to
wish and desire.” 4 Spinoza compares the feeling of free will
to a stone’s thinking, as it travels through space, that it de-
termines its own trajectory and selects the place and time of
its fall.®

Since human actions obey laws as fixed as those of geometry,
psychology should be studied in geometrical form, and with
mathematical objectivity. “I will write about human beings
as though I were concerned with lines and planes and sol-
ids.” 6 “I have labored carefully not to mock, lament, or ex-
ecrate, but to understand, human actions; and to this end I
have looked upon passions . . . not as vices of human nature,
but as properties just as pertinent to it as are heat, cold,
storm, thunder and the like to the nature of the atmosphere.” 7
It is this impartiality of approach that gives to Spinoza’s
study of human nature such superiority that Froude called it
“the most complete by far which has ever been made by any
moral philosopher.” 8 Taine knew no better way of praising

mi, 57.

2 III, 2, notte.

s II, 48.

4 1, App.

b Epistle 58, ed. Pollock.

® T. T-P., Introd.

* Ibid., ch. 1.

& Short Studies, I, 808.

SPINOZA

197

Beyle’s analysis than to compare it with Spinoza’s; while Jo-
hannes Muller, coming to the subject of the instincts and emo-
tions, wrote: “With regard to the relations of the passions
to one another apart from their physiological conditions, it is
impossible to give any better account than that which Spin-
oza has laid down with unsurpassed mastery,” — and the
famous physiologist, with the modesty which usually accom-
panies real greatness, went on to quote in extenso the third
book of the Ethics. It is through that analysis of human
conduct that Spinoza approaches at last the problems which
give the title to his masterpiece.

3. Intelligence and Morals

Ultimately there are but three systems of ethics, three con-
ceptions of the ideal character and the moral life. One is that
of Buddha and Jesus, which stresses the feminine virtues, con-
siders all men to be equally precious, resists evil only by re-
turning good, identifies virtue with love, and inclines in poli-
tics to unlimited democracy. Another is the ethic of Machia-
velli and Nietzsche, which stresses the masculine virtues, ac-
cepts the inequality of men, relishes the risks of combat and
conquest and rule, identifies virtue with power, and exalts an
hereditary aristocracy. A third, the ethic of Socrates, Plato,
and Aristotle, denies the universal applicability of either the
feminine or the masculine virtues; considers that only the in-
formed and mature mind can judge, according to diverse cir-
cumstance, when love should rule, and when power; identifies
virtue, therefore, with intelligence; and advocates a varying
mixture of aristocracy and democracy in government. It is
the distinction of Spinoza that his ethic unconsciously recon-
ciles these apparently hostile philosophies, weaves them into a
harmonious unity, and gives us in consequence a system of
morals which is the supreme achievement of modern thought.

He begins by making happiness the goal of conduct; and
he defines happiness very simply as the presence of pleasure

THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY

198

and the absence of pain. But pleasure and pain are rela-
tive, not absolute; and they are not states but transitions*
“Pleasure is man’s transition from a lesser state of perfec-
tion” (i. e., completeness, or fulfillment) “to a greater.” “Joy
consists in this, that one’s power is increased.” 1 “Pain is
man’s transition from a greater state of perfection to a lesser.
I say transition ; for pleasure is not perfection itself : if a
man were born with the perfection to which he passes he
would be without . . . the emotion of pleasure. And the
contrary of this makes it still more apparent.” 2 All passions
are passages, all emotions are motions, towards or from com-
pleteness and power.

“By emotion ( affectus ) I understand the modifications of
the body by which the power of action in the body is increased
or diminished, aided or restrained, and at the same time the
ideas of these modifications.” 3 (This theory of emotion is
usually credited to James and Lange; it is here formulated
more precisely than by either of these psychologists, and ac-
cords remarkably with the findings of Professor Cannon.) A
passion or an emotion is bad or good not in itself, but only as
it decreases or enhances our power. “By virtue and power
I mean the same thing ”; 4 a virtue is a power of acting, a
form of ability ; 6 “the more a man can preserve his being and
seek what is useful to him, the greater is his virtue .” 4
Spinoza does not ask a man to sacrifice himself to another’s
good; he is more lenient than nature. He thinks that ego-
ism is a necessary corollary of the supreme instinct of self-
preservation ; “no one ever neglects anything which he judges
to be good, except with the hope of gaining a greater good.” 7
This seems to Spinoza perfectly reasonable. “Since reason

1 Cf . Nietzsche: “What is happiness? The feeling that power increases-
that resistance is overcome.” — Antichrist, sect. 2.

2 III, App.

8 III, def. 3.

4 IV, def. 8.

c III, 55, cor. 2.

6 IV, 20.

*T. T-P., ch. 16.

SPINOZA

199

demands nothing against nature, it concedes that each man
must love himself, and seek what is useful to him, and desire
whatever leads him truly to a greater state of perfection ; and
that each man should endeavor to preserve his being so far
as in him lies.” 1 So he builds his ethic not on altruism and
the natural goodness of man, like utopian reformers; nor on
selfishness and the natural wickedness of man, like cynical
conservatives, but on what he considers to be an inevitable and
justifiable egoism. A system of morals that teaches a man to
be weak is worthless; “the foundation of virtue is no other
than the effort to maintain one’s being; and man’s happiness
consists in the power of so doing.” 2

Like Nietzsche, Spinoza has not much use for humility ; *
it is either the hypocrisy of a schemer or the timidity of a
slave; it implies the absence of power — whereas to Spinoza
all virtues are forms of ability and power. So is remorse a
defect rather than a virtue : “he who repents is twice unhappy
and doubly weak.” 4 But he does not spend so much time as
Nietzsche in inveighing against humility; for “humility is very
rare ” ; 5 and as Cicero said, even the philosophers who write
books in its praise take care to put their names on the title-
page. “One who despises himself is the nearest to a proud
man,” says Spinoza (putting in a sentence a pet theory of the
psychoanalysts, that every conscious virtue is an effort to
conceal or correct a secret vice). And whereas Spinoza dis-
likes humility he admires modesty, and objects to a pride that
is not “tenoned and mortised” in deeds. Conceit makes meri
a nuisance to one another : “the conceited man relates only
his own great deeds, and only the evil ones of others ” ; 6 he
delights in the presence of his inferiors, who will gape at his
perfections and exploits; and becomes at last the victim of

1 IV, 18 note.

2 Ibid.

8 III, 55,

* IV, 54.

6 III, App., def. 29.

• Ibid,; and III, 55, note.

200

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those who praise him most; for “none are more taken in by
flattery than the proud.” 1

So far our gentle philosopher offers us a rather Spartan
ethic; but he strikes in other passages a softer tone. He
marvels at the amount of envy, recrimination, mutual belittle-
ment, and even hatred, which agitates and separates men; and
sees no remedy for our social ills except in the elimination of
these and similar emotions. He believes it is a simple matter
to show that hatred, perhaps because it trembles on the verge
of love, can be more easily overcome by loVe than by recip-
rocated hate. For hatred is fed on the feeling that it is
returned ; whereas “he who believes himself to be loved by one
whom he hates is a prey to the conflicting emotions of hatred
and love, since (as Spinoza perhaps too optimistically be-
lieves) love tends to beget love; so that his hatred disinte-
grates and loses force. To hate is to acknowledge our
inferiority and our fear; we do not hate a foe whom we ar$
confident we can overcome. “He who wishes to revenge in-
juries by reciprocal hatred will live in misery. But he who
endeavors to drive away hatred by means of love, fights with
pleasure and confidence; he resists equally one or many men,
and scarcely needs at all the help of fortune. Those whom
he conquers yield joyfully.” 2 “Minds are conquered not by
arms but by greatness of soul.” 8 In such passages Spinoza
sees something of the light which shone on the hills of Galilee.

But the essence of his ethic is rather Greek than Christian.
“The endeavor to understand is the first and only basis of
virtue” 4 — nothing could be more simply and thoroughly
Socratic. For “ we are tossed about by external causes in
many ways, and like waves driven by contrary winds, we
waver and are unconscious of the issue and our fate.” 6 We
think we are most ourselves when we are most passionate,

l IV, App., def. 21.

2 IV, 45.
s IV, App., 11.
a IV, 26.

• Ill, 59, note.

SPINOZA

201

whereas it is then we are most passive, caught in some ances-
tral torrent of impulse or feeling, and swept on to a precipi-
tate reaction which meets only part of the situation because
without thought only part of a situation can be perceived. A
passion is an “inadequate idea” ; thought is response delayed
till every vital angle of a problem has aroused a correlative
reaction, inherited or acquired; only so is the idea adequate,
the response all that it can be . 1 The instincts are magnificent
as a driving force, but dangerous as guides; for by what we
may call the individualism of the instincts, each of them seeks
its own fulfilment, regardless of the good of the whole per-
sonality. What havoc has come to men, for example, from
uncontrolled greed, pugnacity, or lust, till such men have be-
come but the appendages of the instinct that has mastered
them. “The emotions by which we are daily assailed have
reference rather to some part of the body which is affected
beyond the others, and so the emotions as a rule are in excess,
and detain the mind in the contemplation of one object so that
it cannot think of others.” 2 But “desire that arises from
pleasure or pain which has reference to one or certain parts of
the body has no advantage to man as a whole.” 8 To be our-
selves we must complete ourselves.

All this is, of course, the old philosophic distinction between
reason and passion; but Spinoza adds vitally to Socrates and
the Stoics. He knows that as passion without reason is blind,
reason without passion is dead. “An emotion can neither be
hindered nor removed except by a contrary and stronger
emotion.” 4 Instead of uselessly opposing reason to passion
—a contest in which the more deeply rooted and ancestral
element usually wins — he opposes reasonless passions to pas-
sions coordinated by reason, put into place by the total per-

*To phrase it in later terms: reflex action is a local response to a local
stimulus; instinctive action is a partial response to part of a situation; rea-
son is total response to the whole situation.

2 IV, 44, note.

8 IV, 60.

4 IV, 7, 14.

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spective of the situation. Thought should not lack the heat of
desire, nor desire the light of thought. “A passion ceases
to he a passion as soon as we form a clear and distinct idea
of it, and the mind is subject to passions in proportion to
the number of adequate ideas which it has.” 1 “All appetites
are passions only so far as they arise from inadequate ideas;
they are virtues ... when generated by adequate ideas ”; 2
all intelligent behavior — i. e., all reaction which meets the total
situation — is virtuous action ; and in the end there is no virtue
but intelligence.

Spinoza’s ethics flows from his metaphysics: just as reason
there lay in the perception of law in the chaotic flux of things,
so here it lies in the establishment of law in the chaotic flux
of desires; there it lay in seeing, here it lies in acting, sub
specie eternitatis — under the form of eternity ; in making per-
ception and action fit the eternal perspective of the whole.
Thought helps us to this larger view because it is aided by
imagination, which presents to consciousness those distant ef-
fects of present actions which could have no play upon re-
action if reaction were thoughtlessly immediate. The great
obstacle to intelligent behavior is the superior vividness of
present sensations as compared with those projected memo-
ries which we call imagination. “In so far as the mind con-
ceives a thing according to the dictates of reason, it will be
equally affected whether the idea be of anything present, past,
or future.” 8 By imagination and reason we turn experience
into foresight ; we become the creators of our future, and cease
to be the slaves of our past.

S#» we achieve the only freedom possible to man. The pas-
sivity of passion is “human bondage,” the action of reason is
human liberty. Freedom is not from causal law or process,

iv, s.

2 Notice tne resemblance between the last two quotations and the psycho-
analytic doctrine that desires are “complexes” only so long as we are not
aware of the precise causes of these desires, and that the first element in
treatment is therefore an attempt to bring the desire and its causes to CQE-
pciousnesss — to form “adequate ideas” of it and them.

* IV, 62 .

SPINOZA

but from partial passion or impulse; and freedom not from
passion, but from uncoordinated and uncompleted passion.
We are free only where we know . 1 To be a superman is to
be free not from the restraints of social justice and amenity,
but from the individualism of the instincts. With this com-
pleteness and integrity comes the equanimity of the wise man ;
not the aristocratic self-complacency of Aristotle’s hero, much
less the supercilious superiority of Nietzsche’s ideal, but a
more comradely poise and peace of mind. “Men who are good
by reason — i. e., men who, under the guidance of reason, seek
what is useful to them — desire nothing for themselves which
they do not also desire for the rest of mankind.” 2 To be
great is not to be placed above humanity, ruling others; but
to stand above the partialities and futilities of uninformed
desire, and to rule one’s self.

This is a nobler freedom than that which men call free will;
for the will is not free, and perhaps there is nc “will.” And
let no one suppose that because he is no longer “free,” he is
no longer morally responsible for his behavior and the struc-
ture of his life. Precisely because men’s actions are deter-
mined by their memories, society must for its protection form
its citizens through their hopes and fears into some measure
of social order and cooperation. All education presupposes
determinism, and pours into the open mind of youth a store
of prohibitions which are expected to participate in deter-
mining conduct. “The evil which ensues from evil deeds is
not therefore less to be feared because it comes of necessity;
whether our actions are free or not, our motives still are hope
and fear. Therefore the assertion is false that I would leave
no room for precepts and commands.” 3 On the contrary,
determinism makes for a better moral life : it teaches us not to

l.Cf. Professor Dewey: “A physician or engineer is free in his thought
and his action in the degree in which he knows what he deals with. Possibly
we find here the key to any freedom.” — Human Nature and Conduct; New
York, 1922; p. 303.

2 IV, 18, note ; cf . Whitman : “By God, I will not have anything that all
cannot have their counterpart of on the same terms.”

8 Epistle 43.

204

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despise or ridicule any one, or be angry with any one ; 1 men
are “not guilty”; and though we punish miscreants, it will
be without hate ; we forgive them because they know not what
they do.

Above all, deter mini sm fortifies us to expect and to bear
both faces of fortune with an equal mind; we remember that
all things follow by the eternal decrees of God. Perhaps
wen it will teach us the “intellectual love of God,” whereby we
shall accept the laws of nature gladly, and find our fulfillment
within her limitations. He who sees all things as determined
cannot complain, though he may resist; for he “perceives
things under a certain species of eternity,” 2 and he under-
stands that his mischances are not chances in the total scheme ;
that they find some justification in the eternal sequence and
structure of the world. So minded, he rises from the fitful
pleasures of passion to the high serenity of contemplation
which sees all things as parts of an eternal order and develop-
ment; he learns to smile in the face of the inevitable, and
“whether he comes into his own now, or in a thousand years,
he sits content.” 8 He learns the old lesson that God is no
capricious personality absorbed in the private affairs of his
devotees, but the invariable sustaining order of the universe.
Plato words the same conception beautifully in the Republic:
“He whose mind is fixed upon true being has no time to look
down upon the little affairs of men, or to be filled with jealousy
and enmity in the struggle against them; his eye is ever di-
rected towards fixed and immutable principles, which he sees
neither injuring nor injured by one another, but all in order
moving according to reason ; these he imitates, and to these he
would, as far as he can, conform himself .” 4 “That which
is necessary,” says Nietzsche, “does not offend me. Amor
fati ” — love of fate — “is the core of my nature.” 5 Or Keats:

i II, end.

2 II, 44, cop. 2.

a Whitman.

A §500.

3 Ecce Homo, p. 180. It was rather Nietzsche’s hope than his attain*
ment.

SPINOZA

205

To bear all naked truths,

And to envisage circumstance, all calm :

That is the top of sovereignty. 1

Such a philosophy teaches us to say Yea to life, and even to
death — “ a free man thinks of nothing less than of death; and
his wisdom is a meditation not on death but on life.” 2 It
calms our fretted egos with its large perspective ; it reconciles
us to the limitations within which our purposes must be cir-
cumscribed. It may lead to resignation and an Orientally su-
pine passivity; but it is also the indispensable basis of all
wisdom and all strength.

4. Religion and Immortality

After all, as we perceive, Spinoza’s philosophy was an at-
tempt to love even a world in which he was outcast and alone ;
again like Job, he typified his people, and asked how it could
be that even the just man, like the chosen people, should suffer
persecution and exile and every desolation. For a time the
conception of the world as a process of impersonal and invar-
iable law soothed and sufficed him; but in the end his essen-
tially religious spirit turned this mute process into something
almost lovable. He tried to merge his own desires with the
universal order of things, to become an almost indistinguish-
able part of nature. “The greatest good is the knowledge of
the union which the mind has with the whole nature.” 3 In-
deed, our individual separateness is in a sense illusory ; we are
parts of the great stream of law and cause, parts of God; we
are the flitting forms of a being greater than ourselves, and
endless while we die. Our bodies are cells in the body of the
race, our race is an incident in the drama of life; our minds
are the fitful flashes of an eternal light. “Our mind, in so far
as it understands, is an eternal mode of thinking, which is
determined by another mode of thinking, and this one again

1 Hyperion, II, 203.

2 Ethics, IY, 67.

*De Emendatione , p. 230.

206

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by another, and so On to infinity ; so that they all constitute at
the same time the eternal and infinite intellect of God.” 1 In
this pantheistic merging of the individual with the All, the
Orient speaks again: we hear the echo of Omar, who “never
called the One two,” and of the old Hindu poem: “Know in
thyself and All one self-same soul ; banish the dream that sun-
ders part from whole.” 2 “Sometimes,” said Thoreau, “as I
drift idly on Walden Pond, I cease to live and begin to be.”

As such parts of such a whole we are immortal. “The hu-
man mind cannot be absolutely destroyed with the human
body, but there is some part of it which remains eternal .” 8
This is the part that conceives things sub specie eternitatis;
the more we so conceive things, the more eternal our thought
is. Spinoza is even more than usually obscure here ; and after
endless controversy among interpreters his language yet
speaks differently to different minds. Sometimes one imag-
ines him to mean George Eliot’s immortality by repute,
whereby that which is most rational and beautiful in our
thought and our lives survives us to have an almost timeless
efficacy down the years. Sometimes again Spinoza seems to
have in mind a personal and individual immortality; and it
may be that as death loomed up so prematurely in his path
he yearned to console himself with this hope that springs eter-
nally in the human breast. Yet he insistently differentiates
eternity from everlastingness: “If we pay attention to the
common opinion of men, we shall see that they are conscious
of the eternity of their minds; but they confuse eternity with
duration, and attribute it to imagination or memory, which
they believe will remain after death.” 4 But like Aristotle,
Spinoza, though talking of immortality, denies the survival of
personal memory. “The mind can neither imagine nor recol-
lect anything save while in the body.” 5 Nor does he believe

1 Ethics, V, 40, note.

2 In Pollock, 169, 145.

* Ethics, V, 23.

<4 V, 34, note.

3V, 21.

SPINOZA

207

in heavenly rewards: “Those are far astray from a true es-
timate of virtue who expect for their virtue, as if it were the
greatest slavery, that God will adorn them with the greatest
rewards; as if virtue and the serving of God were not hap-
piness itself and the greatest liberty.” 1 “Blessedness,” reads
the last proposition of Spinoza’s book, “is not the reward of
virtue, but virtue itself.” And perhaps in the like manner, im-
mortality is not the reward of clear thinking, it is clear
thought itself, as it carries up the past into the present and
reaches out into the future, so overcoming the limits and nar-
rowness of time, and catching the perspective that remains
eternally behind the kaleidoscope of change; such thought is
immortal because every truth is a permanent creation, part
of the eternal acquisition of man, influencing him endlessly.

With this solemn and hopeful note the Ethics ends. Sel-
dom has one book enclosed so much thought, and fathered so
much commentary, while yet remaining so bloody a battle-
ground for hostile interpretations. Its metaphysic may be
faulty, its psychology imperfect, its theology unsatisfactory
and obscure ; but of the soul of the book, its spirit and essence,
no man who has read it will speak otherwise than reverently.
In the concluding paragraph that essential spirit shines forth
in simple eloquence :

Thus I have completed all I wished to show concerning
the power of the mind over emotions, or the freedom of the
mind. From which it is clear how much a wise man is in
front of and how stronger he is than an ignorant one, who
is guided by lust alone. For an ignorant man, besides being
agitated in many ways by external causes, never enjoys one
true satisfaction of the mind: he lives, moreover, almost
unconscious of himself, God, and things, and as soon as he
ceases to be passive, ceases to be. On the contrary the wise
man, in so far as he is considered as such, is scarcely moved
in spirit; he is conscious of himself, of God, and things by
a certain eternal necessity ; he never ceases to be, and always
enjoys satisfaction of mind. If the road I have shown to
i II, 49, note.

208

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lead to this is very difficult, it can yet be discovered. And
clearly it must be very hard when it is so seldom found.
For how could it be that it is neglected practically by all,
if salvation were close at hand and could be found without
difficulty? But all excellent things are as difficult as they
are rare.

V. THE POEITICAIi TREATISE

There remains for our analysis that tragic torso, the Trac -
tatus Politicus 9 the work of Spinoza’s maturest years, stopped
suddenly short by his early death. It is a brief thing, and
yet full of thought; so that one feels again how much was
lost when this gentle life was closed at the very moment that it
was ripening to its fullest powers. In the same generation
which saw Hobbes exalting absolute monarchy and denouncing
the uprising of the English people against their king almost
as vigorously as Milton was defending it, Spinoza, friend of
the republican De Witts, formulated a political philosophy
which expressed the liberal and democratic hopes of his day in
Holland, and became one of the main sources of that stream
of thought which culminated in Rousseau and the Revolution,
All political philosophy, Spinoza thinks, must grow out of
a distinction between the natural and the moral order — that
is, between existence before, and existence after, the formation
of organized societies. Spinoza supposes that men once lived
in comparative isolation, without law or social organization;
there were then, he says, no conceptions of right and wrong,
justice or injustice; might and right were one.

Nothing can exist in a natural state which can be called
good or bad by common assent, since every man who is in
a natural state consults only his own advantage, and de-
termines what is good or bad according to his own fancy
and in so far as he has regard for his own advantage alone,
and holds himself responsible to no one save himself by any
law ; and therefore sin cannot be conceived in a natural state,
but only in a civil state, where it is decreed by common

SPINOZA

209

consent what is good or bad, and each one holds himself
responsible to the state . 1 . . . The law and ordinance of
nature under which all men are born, and for the most part
live, forbids nothing but what no one wishes or is able to
do, and is not opposed to strife, hatred, anger, treachery,
or, in general, anything that appetite suggests . 2

We get an inkling of this law of nature, or this lawlessness
of nature, by observing the behavior of states ; “there is no al-
truism among nations,” 8 for there can be law and morality
only where there is an accepted organization, a common and
recognized authority. The “rights” of states are now what
the “rights” of individuals used to be (and still often are) ,
that is, they are mights, and the leading states, by some for-
getful honesty of diplomats, are very properly called the
“Great Powers.” So it is too among species : there being
no common organization, there is not among them any mo-
rality or law; each species does to the other what it wishes
and can . 4

But among men, as mutual needs begets mutual aid, this
natural order of powers passes into a moral order of rights.
“Since fear of solitude exists in all men, because no one in
solitude is strong enough to defend himself and procure the
necessaries of life, it follows that men by nature tend towards
social organization.” 6 To guard against danger “the force
or strength of one man would hardly suffice if men did not
arrange mutual aid and exchange.” 6 Men are riot by nature,
however, equipped for the mutual forbearance of social order ;
but danger begets association, which gradually nourishes and
strengthens the social instincts : “men are not born for citizen-
ship, but must be made fit for it.” 7

Most men are at heart individualistic rebels against law or

1 Ethics , IV, 37, note 2.

2 Tractatus Politicus, ch. 2.
c Bismarck.

* Ethics, IV, 37, note 1; and App., 27.

» T. T-P ., ch. 6.

8 Ethic 8, IV, App., 28.

* T. P ., ch. 5.

THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY

| 210

f

custom: the social instincts are later and weaker than the in-
i'- dividualistic, and need reinforcement; man is not “good by

l nature,” as Rousseau was so disastrously to suppose. But

f through association, if even merely in the family, sympathy

comes, a feeling of kind, and at last of kindness. We like
what is like us ; “we pity not only a thing we have loved, but
also one which we judge similar to ourselves ”; 1 out of this
P comes an “imitation of emotions,” 2 and finally some degree

l of conscience. Conscience, however, is not innate, but ac-

| qtiired; and varies with geography . 3 It is the deposit, in the

mind of the growing individual, of the moral traditions of the
group; through it society creates for itself an ally in the heart
of its enemy — the naturally individualistic soul.

Gradually, in this development, it comes about that the law
of individual power which obtains in a state of nature, yields
in organized society to the legal and moral power of the whole.
Might still remains right; but the might of the whole limits
! the might of the individual — limits it theoretically to his

i rights, to such exercise of his powers as agrees with the equal

■ freedom of others. Part of the individual’s natural might, or

r sovereignty, is handed over to the organized community, in re-

turn for the enlargement of the sphere of his remaining
[ powers. We abandon, for example, the right to fly from

I anger to violence, and are freed from the danger of such

| violence from others. Law is necessary because men are sub-

ject to passions; if all men were reasonable, law would be
I superfluous. The perfect law would bear to individuals the

I same relation which perfect reason bears to passions : it would

I be the coordination of conflicting forces to avoid the ruin and

increase the power of the whole. Just as, in metaphysics,
reason is the perception of order in things, and in ethics the
establishment of order among desires, so in politics it is the
establishment of order among men. The perfect state would

f i Ethics III, 22, note.

f * Ibid., 27, note 1.

s HI, App., 27.

SPINOZA

211

limit the powers of its citizens only as far as these powers were
mutually destructive; it would withdraw no liberty except to
add a greater one.

The last end of the state is not to dominate men, nor to
restrain them by fear; rather it is so to free each man from
fear that he may live and act with full security and without
injury to himself or his neighbor. The end of the state, I
repeat, is not to make rational beings into brute beasts and
machines. It is to enable their bodies and their minds to
function safely. It is to lead men to live by, and to exercise,
a free reason ; that they may not waste their strength in
hatred, anger and guile, nor act unfairly toward one an-
other. Thus the end of the state is really liberty . 1

Freedom is the goal of the state because the function of
the state is to promote growth, and growth depends on
capacity finding freedom. But what if laws stifle growth and
freedom? What shall a man do if the state, seeking, like
every organism or organization, to preserve its own existence
(which ordinarily means that office-holders seek to keep them-
selves in office), becomes a mechanism of domineering and
exploitation? Obey even the unjust law, answers Spinoza,
if reasonable protest and discussion are allowed and speech is
left free to secure a peaceful change. “I confess that from
such freedom inconveniences may sometimes arise; but what
question was ever settled so wisely that no abuses could spring
therefrom ?” 2 Laws against free speech are subversive of
all law; for men will not long respect laws which they may
not criticize.

The more a government strives to curtail freedom of
peech, the more obstinately is it resisted ; not indeed by the
avaricious, . . . but by those whom good education, sound
norality, and virtue have rendered more free. Men in gen^
eral are so constituted that there is nothing they will endure
with so little patience as that views which they believe

i T. T-P., ch. 20.

*Ibid.

212

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to be true should be counted crimes against the laws, . . «
Under such circumstances they do not think it disgraceful,
but most honorable, to hold the laws in abhorrence, and to
refrain from no action against the government . 1 . . . Laws
which can be broken without any wrong to one’s neighbor
are counted but a laughing-stock; and so far from such
laws restraining the appetites and lusts of mankind,
they rather heighten them. Nitimur in vetitum semper ,
cupimusque negata . 2

And Spinoza concludes like a good American constitution-
alist: “If actions only could be made the ground of criminal
prosecutions, and words were always allowed to pass free,
sedition would be divested of every semblance of justifica-
tion.” 3

The less control the state has over the mind, the better
for both the citizen and the state. Spinoza, while recogniz-
ing the necessity of the state, distrusts it, knowing that power
corrupts even the incorruptible (was this not the name of
Robespierre?) ; and he does not look with equanimity upon
the extension of its authority from the bodies and actions to
the souls and thoughts of men; that would be the end af
growth and the death of the group. So he disapproves of
state control of education, especially in the universities :
“Academies that are founded at the public expense are in-
stituted not so much to cultivate men’s natural abilities as
to restrain them. But in a free commonwealth arts and
sciences will be better cultivated to the full if every one that
asks leave is allowed to teach publicly, at his own cost and
risk .” 4 How to find a middle way between universities
controlled by the state and universities controlled by private
wealth, is a problem which Spinoza does not solve; private
wealth had not in his day grown to such proportions as to

1 Ibid.

2 T. P., ch. 10. (“We always resist prohibitions, and yearn for what is
denied us. w )

a T. T-P,, pref.

4 T. P. f oh. 8.

SPINOZA

213

suggest the difficulty. His ideal, apparently, was higher
education such as once flourished in Greece, coming not from
institutions but from free individuals — “Sophists” — who
traveled from city to city and taught independently of either
public or private control.

These things premised, it makes no great difference what
is the form of government; and Spinoza expresses only a
mild preference for democracy. Any of the traditional
political forms can be framed “so that every man . . . may
prefer public right to private advantage ; this is the task” of
the law-giver 1 Monarchy is efficient, but oppressive and
militaristic.

Experience is thought to teach that it makes for peace
and concord to confer the whole authority on one man.
For no dominion has stood so long without any notable
change as that of the Turks; and on the other hand there
were none so little lasting as those which were popular or
democratic, nor any in which so many seditions arose. Yet
if slavery, barbarism and desolation are to be called peace,
men can have no worse misfortune. No doubt there are
usually more and sharper quarrels between parents and
children, than between masters and slaves; yet it advances
not the art of household management to change a father’s
right into a right of property, and count children but as
slaves. Slavery, then, and not peace, is furthered by hand-
ing over the whole authority to one man. 2

To which he adds a word on secret diplomacy :

It has been the one song of those who thirst after ab-
solute power that the interest of the state requires that its
affairs should be conducted in secret. . . . But the more
such arguments disguise themselves under the mask of public
welfare, the more oppressive is the slavery to which they
will lead. . . . Better that right counsels be known to enemies
than that the evil secrets of tyrants should be concealed

x T. T-P., ch. 17.

P., ch. 6.

814

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from the citizens. They who can treat secretly of the
affairs of a nation have it absolutely under their authority;
and as they plot against the enemy in time of war, so do they
against the citizens in time of peace . 1

Democracy is the most reasonable form of government; for
in it “every one submits to the control of authority over his
actions, but not over his judgment and reason; i. e., seeing
that all cannot think alike, the voice of the majority has the
force of law.” 2 The military basis of this democracy should
be universal military service, the citizens retaining their arms
during peace ; 8 its fiscal basis should be the single tax . 4 The
defect of democracy is its tendency to put mediocrity into
power; and there is no way of avoiding this except by
limiting office to men of “trained skill.” 6 Numbers by them-
selves cannot produce wisdom, and may give the best favors
of office to the grossest flatterers. “The fickle disposition of
the multitude almost reduces those who have experience of it
to despair; for it is governed solely by emotions, and not by
reason.” 6 Thus democratic government becomes a procession
of brief-lived demagogues, and men of worth are loath to enter
lists where they must be judged and rated by their inferiors . 7
Sooner or later the more capable men rebel against such a
system, though they be in a minority. “Hence I think it is
that democracies change into aristocracies, and these at length
into monarchies ” ; 8 people at last prefer tyranny to chaos.
Equality of power is an unstable condition ; men are by nature
unequal; and “he who seeks equality between unequals seeks

IT. P., ch. 7.

2 T. T-P., ch. 20.

a T. P., ch. 7.

4 “The fields and the whole soil, and (if it can be managed) the bouses,
should be public property, ... let at a yearly rental to the citizen; . c . and
with this exception let them all be free from every kind of taxation in tune of
|>eace.” — T. P., ch. 6.

5 T. T-P., ch. 13.

3 Ibid., ch. 17.

* Ethics, IV, 58, note.

b TV ch. 8.

SPINOZA

£15

an absurdity.” Democracy has still to solve the problem of
enlisting' the best energies of men while giving to all alike
the choice of those, among the trained and fit, by whom they
wish to be ruled.

Who knows what light the genius of Spinoza might have
cast upon this pivotal problem of modem politics had he
been spared to complete his work? But even that which we
have of this treatise was but the first and imperfect draft of
his thought. While writing the chapter on democracy he died.

VI. THE INFLUENCE OP SPINOZA

“Spinoza did not seek to found a sect, and he founded
none” ; 1 yet all philosophy after him is permeated with his
thought. During the generation that followed his death, his
name was held in abhorrence; even Hume spoke of his
“hideous hypothesis” ; “people talked of Spinoza,” said Les-
sing, “as if he were a dead dog.”

It was Lessing who restored him to repute. The great
critic surprised Jacobi, in their famous conversation in 1784, 2
by saying that he had been a Spinozist throughout his mature
life, and affirming that “there is no other philosophy than
that of Spinoza.” His love of Spinoza had strengthened his
friendship with Moses Mendelssohn; and in his great play,
Nathan der Weise , he poured into one mould that conception
of the ideal Jew which had come to him from the living mer-
chant and the dead philosopher. A few years later Herder’s
Einige Gesprache iiber Spinoza’s System turned the attention
of liberal theologians to the Ethics; Schleiermacher, leader
of this school, wrote of “the holy and excommunicated
Spinoza,” while the Catholic poet, Novalis, called him “the
god-intoxicated man.”

Meanwhile Jacobi had brought Spinoza to the attention of
Goethe; the great poet was converted, he tells us, at the first

1 Pollock, 79.

2 Printed in full in Willis.

216 THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY

reading of the Ethics ; 1 it was precisely the philosophy for
which his deepening soul had yearned ; henceforth it pervaded
his poetry and his prose. It was here that he found the lesson
doss wir entsagen sollen — that we must accept the limitations
which nature puts upon us ; and it was partly by breathing the
calm air of Spinoza that he rose out of the wild romanticism
of Gotz and Werther to the classic poise of his later life.

It was by combining Spinoza with Kant’s epistemology that
Fichte, Schelling and Hegel reached their varied pantheisms;
it was from the conatus sese preservandi, the effort to preserve
one’s self, that Fichte’s Ich was born, and Schopenhauer’s
“will to live,” and Nietzsche’s “will to power,” and Bergson’s
Sian vital. Hegel objected that Spinoza’s system was too
lifeless and rigid; he was forgetting this dynamic element of
it and remembering only that majestic conception of God as
law which he appropriated for his “Absolute Reason.” But
he was honest enough when he said, “To be a philosopher one
must first be a Spinozist.”

In England the influence of Spinoza rose on the tide of the
Revolutionary movement ; and young rebels like Coleridge and
Wordsworth talked about “Spy-nosa” (which the spy set by
the government to watch them took as a reference to his own
nasal facilities) with the same ardor that animated the con-
versation of Russian intellectuals in the halcyon days of Y
Narod. Coleridge filled his guests with Spinozist table-talk;
and Wordsworth caught something of the philosopher’s thought
in his f amous lines about

Something

Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,

And the round ocean, and the living air,

And the blue sky, and in the mind of man; —

A motion and a spirit, which impels

All thinking things, all objects of all thought,

And rolls through all things.

i Brandes, Main Currents in Nineteenth Century Literature ; New York,
190S; vol. vi, p. 10. Cf. Brandes, Wolfgang Ooethe; New York, 1924; vol. I,
pp. 432_7.

SPINOZA

217

Shelley quoted the Treatise on Religion and the State in the
original notes to Queen Mah, and began a translation of it
for which Byron promised a preface. A fragment of this
MS. came into the hands of C. S. Middleton, who took it for
a work of Shelley’s own, and called it “school-boy specula-
tion . . . too crude for publication entire.” In a later and
tamer age George Eliot translated the Ethics , though she
never published the translation; and one may suspect that
Spencer’s conception of the Unknowable owes something to
Spinoza through his intimacy with the novelist. “There are
not wanting men of eminence of the present day,” says Bel-
fort Bax, “who declare that in Spinoza is contained the fulness
of modem science.”

Perhaps so many were influenced by Spinoza because he
lends himself to so many interpretations, and yields new
riches at every reading. All profound utterances have varied
facets for diverse minds. One may say of Spinoza what
Ecclesiastes said of Wisdom: “The first man knew him not
perfectly, no more shall the last find him out. For his
thoughts are more than the sea, and his counsels profounder
than the great deep.”

On the second centenary of Spinoza’s death subscriptions
were collected for the erection of a statue to him at the
Hague. Contributions came from every corner of the edu-
cated world; never did a monument rise upon so wide a
pedestal of love. At the unveiling in 1882 Ernest Henan
concluded his address with words which may fitly conclude also
our chapter: “Woe to him who in passing should hurl an
insult at this gentle and pensive head. He would be punished,
as all vulgar souls are punished, by his very vulgarity, and by
his incapacity to conceive what is divine. This man, from
his granite pedestal, will point out to all men the way of
blessedness which he found; and ages hence, the cultivated
traveler, passing by this spot, will say in his heart, ‘The truest
vision ever had of God came, perhaps, here.’ ” 1

l Ethics, Everyman ed., Introd., xxii, note.

CHAPTER V

VOLTAIRE AND THE FRENCH ENLIGHTENMENT

I. PARIS: (EDIPE

A T Paris in 1742 Voltaire was coaching Mile. Dumes-
. nil to rise to tragic heights in a rehearsal of his play
Merope. She complained that she would have to
have “the very devil” in her to simulate such passion as he
required. “That is just it,” answered Voltaire; “you must
have the devil in you to succeed in any of the arts.” 1 Even
his critics and his enemies admitted that he himself met this
requirement perfectly. “JZ await le diable au corps — he had
the devil in his body,” said Sainte-Beuve ; 2 and De JMaistre
called him the man “into whose hands hell had given all its
powers.” 3

Unprepossessing, ugly, vain, flippant, obscene, unscrupu-
lous, even at times dishonest, — Voltaire was a man with the
faults of his time and place, missing hardly one. And yet
this same Voltaire turns out to have been tirelessly kind, con-
siderate, lavish of his energy and his purse, as sedulous in
helping friends as in crushing enemies, able to kill with a
stroke of his pen and yet disarmed by the first advance of
conciliation so contradictory is man.

But all these qualities, good and bad, were secondary, not
of the essence of Voltaire; the astounding and basic thing in
him was the inexhaustible fertility and brilliance of his mind.
His works fill ninety-nine volumes, of which every page is
sparkling and fruitful, though they range from subject to

i TaUentyre, Life of Voltaire ; third edition; p. 145.

2 Portraits of the Eighteenth Cenjbury; New York, 1905; vol, i, p. 196.
a Brandes, Main Currents in Nineteenth Century Literature ; vol. iii, p. 10T*

218

VOLTAIRE

219

subject across the world as fitfully and bravely as in an
encyclopedia. “My trade is to say what I think ” : 1 and what
he thought was always worth saying, as what he said was
always said incomparably well. If we do not read him now
(though men like Anatole France have been formed to sub-
tlety and wisdom by poring over his pages), it is because the
theological battles which he fought for us no longer interest
us intimately ; we have passed on perhaps to other battle-fields,
and are more absorbed with the economics of this life than
with the geography of the next; the very thoroughness of
Voltaire’s victory over ecclesiasticism and superstition makes
dead those issues which he found alive. Much of his fame,
too, came of his inimitable conversation; but scripta manent,
verba volant — written words remain, while spoken words fly
away, the winged words of Voltaire with the rest. What is
left to us is too much the flesh of Voltaire, too little the divine
fire of his spirit. And yet, darkly as we see him through
the glass of time, what a spirit! — “sheer intelligence trans-
muting anger into fun, fire into light ” ; 2 “a creature of air
and flame, the most excitable that ever lived, composed of
more ethereal and more throbbing atoms than those of other
men; there is none whose mental machinery is more delicate,
nor whose equilibrium is at the same time more shifting and
more exact .” 3 Was he, perhaps, the greatest intellectual
energy in all history?

Certainly he worked harder, and accomplished more, than
any other man of his epoch. “Not to be occupied, and not
to exist, amount to the same thing,” he said. “All people are
good except those who are idle.” His secretary said that he
was a miser only of his time . 4 “One mush give one’s self all
the occupation one can to make life supportable in this
world. . . . The further I advance in age, the more I find
Work necessary. It becomes in the long run the greatest of

- Tallentyre, p. 32.

2J. M. Robertson, Voltaire ; London, 1922; p. 67.

8Taine, The Ancient Regime; New York, 1876; p. 262.

4 Voltaire. Romances ; New York, 1889; p. 12.

220

THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY

pleasures, and takes the place of the illusions of life.” 1 “If
you do not want to commit suicide always have something
to do.” 2

Suicide must have been forever tempting him, for he was
ever at work. “It was because he was so thoroughly alive that
he filled the whole era with his life.” 3 Contemporary with
one of the greatest of centuries (1694-1778), he was the soul
and essence of it. “To name Voltaire,” said Victor Hugo,
“is to characterize the entire eighteenth century.” 4 Italy
had a Renaissance, and Germany had a Reformation, but
France had Voltaire ; he was for his country both Renaissance
and Reformation, and half the Revolution. He carried on
the antiseptic scepticism of Montaigne, and the healthy earthy
humor of Rabelais; he fought superstition and corruption
more savagely and effectively than Luther or Erasmus, Calvin
or Knox or Melanchthon; he helped to make the powder with
which Mirabeau and Marat, Danton and Robespierre blew
up the Old Regime. “If we judge of men by what they have
done,” said Lamartine, “then Voltaire is incontestably the
greatest writer of modern Europe. . . . Destiny gave him
eighty^three years of existence, that he might slowly de-
compose the decayed age; he had the time to combat time;
and when he fell he was the conqueror.” 5

No, never has a writer had in his lifetime such influence.
Despite exile, imprisonment, and the suppression of almost
every one of his books by the minions of church and state,
he forged fiercely a path for his truth, until at last kings,
popes and emperors catered to him, thrones trembled before
him, and half the world listened to catch his every word. It
was an age in which many things called for a destroyer.
“Laughing lions must come,” said Nietzsche; well, Voltaire

i In Sainte-Beuve, i, 226.

2TaUentyre, 93.

8Morley, Voltaire ; London, 1878; p. 14.

4 Centenary address on Voltaire.

* Bomances l pp. vi and ix.

VOLTAIRE

22i;

came, and “annihilated with laughter.” 1 He and Rousseau
were the two voices of a vast process of economic and political
transition from feudal aristocracy to the rule of the middle
class. When a rising class is inconvenienced by existing law
or custom it appeals from custom to reason and from law to
nature — just as conflicting desires in the individual sparkle
into thought. So the wealthy bourgeoisie supported the
rationalism of Voltaire and the naturalism of Rousseau; it
was necessary to loosen old habits and customs, to renovate
and invigorate feeling and thought, to open the mind to
experiment and change, before the great Revolution could
come. Not that Voltaire and Rousseau were the causes of
the Revolution; perhaps rather they were co-results with it
of the forces that seethed and surged beneath the political and
social surface of French life; they were the accompanying
light and brilliance of the volcanic heat and conflagration.
Philosophy is to history as reason is to desire: in either case
an unconscious process determines from below the conscious
thought above.

Yet we must not bend back too far in attempting to correct
the philosopher’s tendency to exaggerate the influence of
philosophy. Louis XVI, seeing in his Temple prison the
works of Voltaire and Rousseau, said, “Those two men have
destroyed France,” 2 — meaning his dynasty. “The Bourbons
might have preserved themselves,” said Napoleon, “if they had
controlled writing materials. The advent of cannon killed
the feudal system; ink will kill the modern social organiza-
tion.” 3 “Books rule the world,” said Voltaire, “or at least
those nations in it which have a written language ; the others
do not count.” “Nothing enfranchises like education”; —
and he proceeded to enfranchise France. “When once a
nation begins to think, it is impossible to stop it.” 4 But
with Voltaire, France began to think.

1 Brandes, 57.

2 Tallentyre, 526.

s Bertaut, Napoleon in His Own Words ; Chicago, 1916; p, 63.

4 Tallentyre, 10L

THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY

“Voltaire,” that is to say, Franyois Marie Arouet, was
born at Paris in 1694, the son of a comfortably successful
notary and a somewhat aristocratic mother. He owed to
his father, perhaps, his shrewdness and irascibility, and to
his mother something of his levity and wit. He came into the
world, so to speak, by a narrow margin: his mother did not
survive his birth; and he was so puny and sickly an infant
that the nurse did not give him more than a day to live. She
was slightly in error, as he lived almost to eighty-four; but
throughout his life his frail body tormented with illness his un-
conquerable spirit.

He had for his edification a model elder brother, Armand,
a pious lad who fell in love with the Jansenist heresy, and
courted martyrdom for his faith. “Well,” said Armand to a
friend who advised the better part of valor, “if you do not
want to be hanged, at least do not put off other people.” The
father said he had two fools for his sons — one in verse and
the other in prose. The fact that Franfois made verses
almost as soon as he could write his name, convinced his very
practical father that nothing good would come of him. But
the famous hetaira, Ninon de l’Enclos, who lived in the
provincial town to which the Arouets had returned after the
birth of Francois, saw in the youth signs of greatness; and
when she died she left him 2000 francs for the purchase
of books. His early education came from these, and from a
dissolute abbe (a Jerome Coignard in the flesh) who taught
him scepticism along with his prayers. His later educators,
the Jesuits, gave him the very instrument of scepticism by
teaching him dialectic — the art of proving anything, and
therefore at last the habit of believing nothing. Francis
became an adept at argument: while the boys played games
in the fields, he, aged twelve, stayed behind to discuss theology
with the doctors. When the time came for him to earn his
living, he scandalized his father by proposing to take up
literature as profession. “Literature,” said M. Arouet, “is
the profession of the man who wishes to be useless to society

VOLTAIRE

and a burden to his relatives, and to die of hunger”; — one
can see the table trembling under his emphasis. So Francis
went in for literature.

Not that he was a quiet and merely studious lad; he burnt
the midnight oil — of others. He took to staying out late,
frolicking with the wits and roisterers of the town, and ex-
perimenting with the commandments; until his exasperated
father sent him off to a relative at Caen, with instructions to
keep the youth practically in confinement. But his jailer fell
in love with his wit, and soon gave him free rein. After im-
prisonment, now as later, came exile : his father sent him to the
Hague with the French ambassador, requesting strict surveil-
lance of the madcap boy ; but Francois at once fell in love
with a little lady, “Pimpette,” held breathless clandestine in-
terviews with her, and 'Vrote to her passionate letters ending
always with the refrain, “I shall certainly love you forever.”
The affair was discovered, and he was sent home. He remem-
bered Pimpette for several weeks.

In 1715, proud of his twenty-one years, he went to Paris,
just in time to be in at the death of Louis XIV. The succeed-
ing Louis being too young to govern France, much less Paris,
the power fell into the hands of a regent; and during this
quasi-interregnum life ran riot in the capital of the world,
and young Arouet ran with it. He soon achieved a reputa-
tion as a brilliant and reckless lad. When the Regent, for
economy, sold half the horses that filled the royal stables,
Franfois remarked how much more sensible it would have
been to dismiss half the asses that filled the royal court. At
last all the bright and naughty things whispered about Paris
were fathered upon him; and it was his ill luck that these
included two poems accusing the Regent of desiring to usurp
the throne. The Regent raged ; and meeting the youth in the
park one day, said to him: “M. Arouet, I will wager that
I can show you something that you have never seen before.”
“What is that?” “The inside of the Bastille.” Arouet saw
V the next day, April 16, 1717.

THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY

224

While in the Bastille he adopted, for some unknown
reason, the pen-name of Voltaire, 1 and became a poet in earnest
and at length. Before he had served eleven months he had
written a long and not unworthy epic, the Henriade, telling
the story of Henry of Navarre. Then the Regent, having
discovered, perhaps, that he had imprisoned an innocent man,
released him and gave him a pension; whereupon Voltaire
wrote thanking him for so taking care of his board, and beg-
ging permission hereafter to take care of his lodging himself.

He passed now almost with a bound from the prison to the
stage. His tragedy, (Edipe, was produced in 1718, and broke
all the records of Paris by running for forty-five consecutive
nights. His old father, come to upbraid him, sat in a box,
and covered his joy by grumbling, at every hit, “Oh, the
rascal! the rascal!” When the poet Fontenelle met Voltaire
after the play and damned it with high praise, saying it was
“too brilliant for tragedy,” Voltaire replied, smiling, “I must
re-read your pastorals.” 2 The youth was in no mood for
caution or for courtesy; had he not put into the play itself
these reckless lines? —

Our priests are not what simple folk suppose ;

Their learning is but our credulity. (Act iv, sc. 1) ;

and into the mouth of Araspe this epoch-making challenge? —

Let us trust to ourselves, see all with our own eyes;

Let these be our oracles, our tripods and our gods, (ii, 5)

The play netted Voltaire 4000 francs, which he proceeded
to invest with a wisdom unheard of in literary men; through
all his tribulations he kept the art not merely of making a
spacious income, but of putting it to work; he respected the
classic adage that one must live before one can philosophize.
In 1729 he bought up all the tickets in a poorly planned

1 Carlyle thought it an anagram for A-r-o-u-e-t l. j. (le jeune, the younger).
But the name seems to have occurred among the family of Voltaire’s mother.

2 /Robertson, 67.

VOLTAIRE

225

government lottery, and made a large sum, much to the
anger of the Government. But as he became rich he be-
came ever more generous; and a growing circle of prote-
ges gathered about him as he passed into the afternoon of
life.

It was well that he added an almost Hebraic subtlety of
finance to his Gallic cleverness of pen; for his next play,
Art emir e, failed. Voltaire felt the failure keenly; every
triumph sharpens the sting of later defeats. He was always
painfully sensitive to public opinion, and envied the animals
because they do not know what people say of them. Fate
added to his dramatic failure a bad case of small-pox ; he
cured himself by drinking 120 pints of lemonade, and some-
what less of physic. When he came out of the shadow of
death he found that his Henriade had made him famous; he
boasted, with reason, that he had made poetry the fashion.
He was received and feted everywhere ; the aristocracy caught
him up and turned him into a polished man of the world, an
unequalled master of conversation, and the inheritor of the
finest cultural tradition in Europe.

For eight years he basked in the sunshine of the salons;
and then fortune turned away. Some of the aristocracy could
not forget that this young man had no other title to place
and honor than that of genius, and could not quite forgive him
for the distinction. During a dinner at the Due de Sully ’s
chateau, after Voltaire had held forth for some minutes with
unabashed eloquence and wit, the Chevalier de Rohan asked,
not sotto voce, “Who is the young man who talks so loud?”
“My Lord,” answered Voltaire quickly, “he is one who does
not carry a great name, but wins respect for the name he
has.” To answer the Chevalier at all was impertinence; to
answer him unanswerably was treason. The honorable Lord
engaged a band of ruffians to assault Voltaire by night, merely
cautioning them, “Don’t hit his head; something good may
come out of that yet.” The next day, at the theatre, Voltaire

*26

THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY

appeared, bandaged and limping, walked up to Rohan’s box,
and challenged him to a duel. Then he went home and spent
all day practising with the foils. But the noble Chevalier
had no mind to be precipitated into heaven, or elsewhere, by
a mere genius; he appealed to his cousin, who was Minister
of Police, to protect him. Voltaire was arrested, and found
himself again in his old home, the Bastille, privileged once
more to view the world from the inside. He was almost im-
mediately released, on condition that he go into exile in
England. He went; but after being escorted to Dover he
recrossed the Channel in disguise, hurning to avenge himself.
Warned that he had been discovered, and was about to be
arrested a third time, he took ship again, and reconciled him-
self to three years in England (1726-29).

n. London: letters on the English

He set to work with courage to master the new language.
He was displeased to find that plague had one syllable and
ague two; he wished that plague would take one-half the lan-
guage, and ague the other half. But soon he could read
English well; and within a year he was master of the best
English literature of the age. He was introduced to the
literati by Lord Bolingbroke, and dined with one after an-
other of them, even with the elusive and corrosive Dean Swift.
He pretended to no pedigree, and asked none of others : when
Congreve spoke of his own plays as trifles, and desired to be
considered rather a gentleman of leisure than an author,
Voltaire said to him sharply, “If you had had the misfortune
to be only a gentleman like any other, I should never have
come to see you.”

What surprised hi m was the freedom with which Boling-
broke, Pope, Addison, and Swift wrote whatever they pleased :
here was a people that had opinions of its own ; a people that
had remade its religion, hanged its king, imported another,
and built a parliament stronger than any ruler in Europe.

VOLTAIRE

m

There was no Bastille here, and no lettres de cachet by which
titled pensioners or royal idlers could send their untitled foes
to jail without cause and without trial. Here were thirty
religions, and not one priest. Here was the boldest sect of
all, the Quakers, who astonished all Christendom by behaving
like Christians. Voltaire never to the end of his life ceased
to wonder at them : in the Dictionnaire Philosophique he makes
one of them say: “Our God, who has bidden us love our
enemies and suffer evil without complaint, assuredly has no
mind that we should cross the sea to go and cut the throats
of our brothers because murderers in red clothes and hats two
feet high enlist citizens by making a noise with two sticks on
an ass’s skin.”

It was an England, too, that throbbed with a virile intel-
lectual activity. Bacon’s name was still in the air, and the
inductive mode of approach was triumphing in every field.
Hobbes (1588-1679) had carried out the sceptical spirit of
the Renaissance, and the practical spirit of his master, into
so complete and outspoken a materialism as would have won
him in France the honor of martyrdom for a fallacy. Locke
(1632—1704) had written a masterpiece of psychological
analysis (the Essay on the Human Understanding , 1689) ,
without any supernatural assumptions. Collins, Tyndal and
other deists were re-affirming their faith in God while call-
ing into question every other doctrine of the established church.
Newton had just died: Voltaire attended the funeral, and
often recalled the impression made upon him by the na-
tional honors awarded to this modest Englishman. “Not
long ago,” he writes, “a distinguished company were dis-
cussing the trite and frivolous question, who was the greatest
man, — Caesar, Alexander, Tamerlane, or Cromwell? Some
one answered that without doubt it was Isaac Newton. And
rightly: for it is to him who masters our minds by the
force of truth, and not to those who enslave them by violence,
that we owe our reverence.” 1 Voltaire became a patient and

l Letters on the English, xiii; in Morley 52.

THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY

328

thorough student of Newton’s works, and was later the chief
protagonist of Newton’s views in France.

One must marvel at the quickness with which Voltaire ab-
sorbed almost all that England had to teach him — its litera-
ture, '.ts science, and its philosophy; he took all these varied
elements, passed them through the fire of French culture and
the French spirit, and transmuted them into the gold of Gallic
wit and eloquence. He recorded his impressions in Letters
on the English, which he circulated in manuscript among his
friends; he did not dare to print them, for they praised
“perfidious Albion” too highly to suit the taste of the royal
censor. They contrasted English political liberty and intel-
lectual independence with French tyranny and bondage ; 1
they condemned the idle aristocracy and the tithe-absorbing
clergy of France, with their perpetual recourse to the Bastille
as the answei to every question and every doubt; they urged
the middle classes to rise to their proper place in the state,
as these classes had in England. Without quite knowing or
intending it, these letters were the first cock’s crow of the
Revolution.

m. cirey: the romances

Nevertheless the Regent, not knowing of this chanticleer,
sent Voltaire permission, in 1729, to return to France. For
five years Voltaire enjoyed again that Parisian life whose wine
flowed in his veins and whose spirit flowed from his pen. And
then some miscreant of a publisher, getting hold of the Letters
on the English, turned them without the author’s permission

i Diderot was jailed six months for his Letter on the Blind ; Buffon, in 1751,
was made to retract publicly his teachings on the antiquity of the earth;
Freret was sent to the Bastille for a critical inquiry into the origins of the
royal power in France; books continued to be burned officially by the public
hangman till 1788, as also after the Restoration in 1815; in 1757 an edict pro-
nounced the death penalty for any author who should “attack religion,” — i. e.,
call in question any dogma of the traditional faith. — Robertson, 73, 84, 105,
107; Pellissier, Voltaire Philosophe, Paris, 1908, p. 92; Buckle, History of
Civilization, New York, 1913; Yol. I, pp. 529 f.

VOLTAIRE

into print, and sold them far and wide, to the horror of all
good Frenchmen, including Voltaire. The Parliament of
Paris at once ordered the book to be publicly burned as “scan-
dalous, contrary to religion, to morals, and to respect for
authority”; and Voltaire learned that he was again on the
way to the Bastille. Like a good philosopher, he took to
his heels — merely utilizing the occasion to elope with another
man’s wife.

The Marquise du Chatelet was twenty-eight; Voltaire, alas,
was already forty. She was a remarkable woman: she had
.studied mathematics with the redoubtable Maupertuis, and
then with Clairaut; she had written a learnedly annotated
translation of Newton’s Principia; she was soon to receive
higher rating than Voltaire in a contest for a prize offered
by the French Academy for an essay on the physics of fire ; in
short she was precisely the kind of woman who never elopes.
But the Marquis was so dull, and Voltaire was so interesting
— “a creature lovable in every way,” she called him; “the
finest ornament in France .” 1 He returned her love with
fervent admiration ; called her “a great man whose only fault
was being a woman”; formed from her, and from the large
number of highly talented women then in France, his convic-
tion of the native mental equality of the sexes ; 2 and decided
that her chateau at Cirey was an admirable refuge from the
inclement political weather of Paris. The Marquis was away
with his regiment, which had long been his avenue of escape
from mathematics; and he made no objection to the new ar-
rangements. Because of the manages de convenances which
forced rich old men on young women who had little taste for
senility but much hunger for romance, the morals of the day
permitted a lady to add a lover to her menage, if it were done
with a decent respect for the hypocrisies of mankind ; and when

1 In Sainte-Beuve, i, 206.

2 Tallentyre, 207. Contrast Voltaire’s “God created woman only to tame
mankind” (I/Ingenu, in Romances , 809), with Meredith’s “Woman will be the
last thing civilized by man” ( Ordeal of Richard Fever el, p. 1). Sociologists
would side with Voltaire. Man is woman’s last domesticated animal.

230 THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY

she chose not merely a lover but a genius, all the world forgave
her.

In the chateau at Cirey they did not spend their time bill-
ing and cooing. All the day was taken up with study and re-
search; Voltaire had an expensive laboratory equipped for
work in natural science; and for years the lovers rivaled each
other in discovery and disquisition. They had many guests,
but it was understood that these should entertain themselves
all day long, till supper at nine. After supper, occasionally,
there were private theatricals ; or Voltaire would .read to the
guests one of his lively stories. Very soon Cirey became the
Paris of the French mind ; the aristocracy and the bourgeoisie
joined in the pilgrimage to taste Voltaire’s wine and wit, and
see him act in his own plays. He was happy to be the centre
of this corrupt and brilliant world; he took nothing too seri-
ously, and for a “while made “Hire et faire rire” his motto. 1
Catherine of Russia called him “the divinity of gayety.” “If
Nature had not made us a little frivolous,” he said, “we should
be most wretched. It is because one can be frivolous that the
majority do not hang themselves.” There was nothing of the
dyspeptic Carlyle about him. “Dulce est desipere in loco. 2
Woe to philosophers who cannot laugh away their wrinkles.
I look upon solemnity as a disease.” 3

It was now that he began to write those delightful romances
— Zadig, Candide , Micromegas, L’ Ingenu, Le Monde covnme
U va, etc. — which give the Voltairean spirit in purer form than
anything else in his ninety-nine volumes. They are not nov-
els, but humoresque-picaresque novelettes; the heroes are not
persons but ideas, the villains are superstitions, and the events
are thoughts. Some are mere fragments, like Ulngerm , which
is Rousseau before Jean Jacques. A Huron Indian comes to
France with some returning explorers; the first problem to
which he gives rise is that of making him a Christian. An
abbe gives him a copy of the New Testament, which the Huron

1 “To laugh and to make laugh.”

2 “It is sweet to be foolish on occasion.”

8 Letter to Frederick the Great, July, 1737.

VOLTAIRE

m

**]tps so much that he soon offers himself not only for bap-
tism but for circumcision as well. “For,” he says, “I do not
find in the book that was put into my hands a single person
who was not circumcised. It is therefore evident that I must
make a sacrifice to the Hebrew custom, and the sooner the bet-
ter.” Hardly has this difficulty been smoothed over when
he has trouble over confession; he asks where in the Gospel
this is commanded, and is directed to a passage in the Epistle
of St. James : “Confess your sins to one another.” He con-
fesses; but “when he had done he dragged the abbe from the
confessional chair, placed himself in the seat, and bade the
abbe confess in turn. “Come, my friend ; it is said, ‘We must
confess our sins to one another’; I have related my sins to
you, and you shall not stir till you recount yours.” He falls
in love with Miss St. Yves, but is told that he cannot marry
her because she has acted as godmother at his baptism; he
is very angry at this little trick of the fates, and threatens
to get unbaptized. Having received permission to marry her,
he is surprised to find that for marriage “notaries, priests,
witnesses, contracts and dispensations are absolutely neces-
sary. . . . ‘You are then very great rogues, since so many
precautions are required.’ ” And so, as the story passes on
from incident to incident, the contradictions between primi-
tive and ecclesiastical Christianity are forced upon the stage;
one misses the impartiality of the scholar and the leniency of
the philosopher; but Voltaire had begun his war against su-
perstition, and in war we demand impartiality and leniency
only of our foes.

Micromegas is an imitation of Swift, but perhaps richer
than its model in cosmic imagination. The earth is visited by
an inhabitant from Sirius ; he is some 500,000 feet tall, as be-
fits the citizen of so large a star. On his way through space
he has picked up a gentleman from Saturn, who grieves be-
cause he is only a few thousand feet in height. As they walk
through the Mediterranean the Sirian wets his heels. He asks
his comrade how many senses the Saturnians have and is told:

232 THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY

“We have seventy-two, but we are daily complaining of the
smaller number.” “To what age do you commonly live?”
“Alas, a mere trifle; . . . very few on our globe survive
15,000 years. So you see that in a manner we begin to die
the very moment we are born: our existence is no more than
a point, our duration an instant, and our globe an atom.
Scarce do we begin to learn a little when death intervenes
before we can profit by experience.” 1 As they stand in the
sea they take up a ship as one might pick up some animalcule ;
and the Sirian poises it on his thumb-nail, causing much com-
motion among the human passengers. “The chaplains of the
ship repeated exorcisms, the sailors swore, and the philos-
ophers formed a system” to explain this disturbance of the
laws of gravity. The Sirian bends down like a darkening
cloud and addresses them:

“O ye intelligent atoms, in whom the Supreme Being hath
been pleased to manifest his omniscience and power, without
doubt your joys on this earth must be pure and exquisite;
for being unencumbered with matter, and^-to all appearance
— little else than soul, you must spend your lives in the de-
lights of pleasure and reflection, which are the true enjoy-
ments of a perfect spirit. True happiness I have nowhere
found; but certainly here it dwells.”

“We have matter enough,” answered one of the philoso-
phers, “to do abundance of mischief. ... You must know,
for example, that at this very moment, while I am speaking,
there are 100,000 animals of our own species, covered with
hats, slaying an equal number of their fellow-creatures,
who wear turbans ; at least they are either slaying or being
slain ; and this has usually been the case all over the earth
from time immemorial.”

“Miscreants !” cried the indignant Sirian ; “I have a good

i "Romances , 339; cf. Shaw’s Back to Methuselah . One of the most famous
of Shaw’s bon mots has its prototype in Voltaire’s Memnon the Philosopher \
Who says, “I am afraid that our little terraqueous globe is the mad-house of
those hundred thousand millions of worlds of which your lordship does me the
honor to speak.” — Ibid , 394.

VOLTAIRE

mind to take two or three steps, and trample the whole
nest of such ridiculous assassins under my feet.”

“Don’t give yourself the trouble,” replied the philosopher;
“they are industrious enough in securing their own destruc-
tion. At the end of ten years the hundredth part of these
wretches will not survive. . . . Besides, the punishment
should not be inflicted upon them, but upon those sedentary
and slothful barbarians who y from their palaces, give orders
for murdering a million of men, and then solemnly thank
God for their success.” 1

Next to Candide , which belongs to a later period of Vol-
taire’s life, the best of these tales is Zadig. Zadig was a Bab-
ylonian philosopher, “as wise as it is possible for men to be;
... he knew as much of metaphysics as hath ever been known
in any age,— that is, little or nothing at all.” “Jealousy made
him imagine that he was in love with Semira.” In defending
her against robbers he was wounded in the left eye.

A messenger was despatched to Memphis for the great
Egyptian physician Hermes, who came with a numerous
retinue. He visited Zadig, and declared that the patient
would lose his eye. He even foretold the day and hour
when this fatal event would happen. “Had it been the
right eye,” said he, “I could easily have cured it; but the
wounds of the left eye are incurable.” All Babylon lamented
the fate of Zadig, and admired the profound knowledge of
Hermes. In two days the abscess broke of its own accord,
and Zadig was perfectly cured. Hermes wrote a book to
prove that it ought not to have healed. Zadig did not
read it . 2

He hurried, instead, to Semira, only to find that upon hear-
ing Hermes’ first report she had betrothed herself to another
man, having, she said, “an unconquerable aversion to one-eyed
men.” Zadig thereupon married a peasant woman, hoping

1 Ibid., 851.

2 Ibid., 40 f.

THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY

£34

to find in her the virtues which had been missing in the court
lady Semira. To make sure of the fidelity of his wife, he
arranged with a friend that he, Zadig, should pretend to die,
and that the friend should make love to the wife an hour later.
So Zadig had himself pronounced dead, and lay in the coffin
while his friend first commiserated and then congratulated the
widow, and at last proposed immediate marriage to her. She
made a brief resistance ; and then, “protesting she would ne’er
consent, consented.” Zadig rose from the dead and fled into
the woods to console himself with the beauty of nature.

Having become a very wise man, he was made vizier to
the king, to whose realm he brought prosperity, justice, and
peace. But the queen fell in love with him ; and the king, per-
ceiving it, “began to be troubled. . . . He particularly re-
marked that the queen’s shoes were blue, and that Zadig’s
shoes were blue; that his wife’s ribbons were yellow, and that
Zadig’s bonnet was yellow.” He resolved to poison them
both; but the queen discovered the plot, and sent a note to
Zadig: “Fly, I conjure thee, by our mutual love and pur
yellow ribbons!” Zadig again fled into the woods.

He then represented to himself the human species, as it
really is, as a parcel of insects devouring one another on a
little atom of clay. This true image seemed to annihilate
his misfortunes, by making him sensible of the nothingness
of his own being and that of Babylon. His soul launched
into infinity; and detached from the senses, contemplated
the immutable order of the universe. But when, afterwards,
returning to himself, ... he considered that the Queen had
perhaps died for him, the universe vanished from sight.

Passing out of Babylon he saw a man cruelly beating a
woman; he responded to her cries for help, fought the man,
and at last, to save himself, struck a blow which killed his
enemy. Thereupon he turned to the lady and asked, “What
further, madam, wouldst thou have me do for thee?” “Die,

VOLTAIRE. 235

villain! for thou hast hilled my lover. Oh, that I were able to
tear out thy heart!”

Zadig was shortly afterward captured and enslaved; but
he taught his master philosophy, and became his trusted coun-
sellor. Through his advice the practice of suttee (by which
a widow had herself buried with her husband) was abolished by
a law which required that before such martyrdom the widow
should spend an hour alone with a handsome man. Sent on a
mission to the King of Serendib, Zadig taught him that an
honest minister could best be found by choosing the lightest
dancer among the applicants: he had the vestibule of the
dance hall filled with loose valuables, easily stolen, and ar-
ranged that each candidate should pass through the vestibule
alone and unwatched; when they had all entered, they were
asked to dance. “Never had dancers performed more un-
willingly or with less grace. Their heads were down, their
backs bent, their hands pressed to their sides.” — And so the
story rushes on. We can imagine those evenings at Cirey !

IV. POTSDAM AND FREDERICK

Those who could not come to him wrote to him. In 1736
began his correspondence with Frederick, then Prince, and not
yet Great. Frederick’s first letter was like that of a boy to
a king ; its lavish flattery gives us an inkling of the reputation
which Voltaire — though he had not yet written any of his mas-
terpieces — had already won. It proclaims Voltaire as “the
greatest man of France, and a mortal who does honor to lan-
guage. ... I count it one of the greatest honors of my life
to be born the contemporary of a man of such distinguished
attainments as yours. ... It is not given to every one to
make the mind laugh” ; and “what pleasures can surpass those
of the mind?” 1 Frederick was a free-thinker, who looked
upon dogmas as a king looks upon subjects; and Voltaire had

i In Sainte-Beuve, i, 212-215.

236 THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY

great hopes that on the throne Frederick would make the En-
lightenment fashionable, while he himself, perhaps, might play
Plato to Frederick’s Dionysius. When Frederick demurred
to the flattery with which Voltaire answered his own, Voltaire
replied : “A prince who writes against flattery is as singular
as a pope who writes against infallibility.” Frederick sent
him a copy of the Anti-Machiavel, in which the prince spoke
very beautifully of the iniquity of war, and of the duty of a
king to preserve peace; Voltaire wept tears of joy over this
royal pacifist. A few months later Frederick, made king, in-
vaded Silesia and plunged Europe into a generation of blood-
shed.

In 1745 the poet and his mathematician went to Paris,
when Voltaire became a candidate for membership in the
French Academy. To achieve this quite superfluous distinc-
tion he called himself a good Catholic, complimented some
powerful Jesuits, lied inexhaustibly, and in general behaved as
most of us do in such cases. He failed; but a year later he
succeeded, and delivered a reception address which is one of
the classics of the literature of France. For a while he lingered
in Paris, flitting from salon to salon, and producing play after
play. From CEdipe at eighteen to Irene at eighty-three he
wrote a long series of dramas, some of them failures, most of
them successes. In 1730 Brutus failed, and in 1732 Eriphyle
failed; his friends urged him to abandon the drama; but in
the same year he produced Zaire, which became his greatest
success. Mahomet followed in 1741, Merope in 1743, Semir-
amis in 1748, and Tancrdde in 1760.

Meanwhile tragedy and comedy had entered his own life.
After fifteen years, his love for Mme. du Chatelet had some-
what thinned; they had even ceased to quarrel. In 1748 the
Marquise fell in love with the handsome young Marquis de
Saint-Lambert. When Voltaire discovered it he raged; but
when Saint-Lambert asked his forgiveness he melted into a
benediction. He had reached the crest of life now, and began
to see death in the distance ; he could not take it ill that youth

VOLTAIRE *31

should be served. “Such are women,” he said philosophically
(forgetting that there are such men too) : “I displaced Rich-
elieu, Saint-Lambert turns me out! That is the order of
things ; one nail drives out another ; so goes the world.” 1 He
wrote a pretty stanza to the third nail :

Saint-Lambert, it is all for thee
The flower grows;

The rose’s thorns are all for me;

For thee the rose.

Then, in 1749, came the death of Mme. du Chatelet in child-
birth. It was characteristic of the age that her husband and
Voltaire and Saint-Lambert should meet at her death-bed with,
not one word of reproach, and indeed made friends by theii
common loss.

Voltaire tried to forget his bereavement in work; for a time
he busied himself with his Siecle de Louis XIV; but what res-
cued him from despondency was the opportune renewal ot
Frederick’s invitation to come to his court at Potsdam. An
invitation accompanied by 3000 francs for traveling expenses
was irresistible. Voltaire left for Berlin in 1750.

It soothed him to find himself assigned to a splendid suite
in Frederick’s palace, and accepted on equal terms by the most
powerful monarch of the age. At first his letters were full of
satisfaction: writing on July 24 to d’Argental he describes
Potsdam — “150,000 soldiers; . . . opera, comedy, philos-
ophy, poetry, grandeur and graces, grenadiers and muses,
trumpets and violins, the suppers of Plato, society and liberty,
— who would believe it? Yet it is very true.” Years before,
he had written: “ Mon Dieu! . . . what a delightful life it
would be to lodge with three or four men of letters with talents
and no jealousy” (what imagination!), “to love one another,
live quietly, cultivate one’s art, talk of it, enlighten ourselves
mutually! — I picture to myself that I shall some day live in
this little Paradise.” 2 And here it was !

1 In Sainte-Beuve, i, 211.

2 Ibid.j i, 193.

238

THE STORY OP PHILOSOPHY

Voltaire avoided the state dinners ; he could not bear to be
surrounded with bristling generals; he reserved himself for
the private suppers to which Frederick, later in the evening,
would invite a small inner circle of literary friends; for this
greatest prince of his age yearned to be a poet and a philos-
opher. The conversation at these suppers was always in
French; Voltaire tried to learn German, but gave it up after
nearly choking; and wished the Germans had more wit and
fewer consonants . 1 One who heard the conversation said that
it was better than the most interesting and best-written book
in the world. They talked about everything, and said what
they thought. Frederick’s wit was almost as sharp as Vol-
taire’s; and only Voltaire dared to answer him, with that
finesse which could kill without giving offense. “One thinks
boldly, one is free here,” wrote Voltaire joyfully. Frederick
“scratches with one hand, but caresses with the other. ... I
am crossed in nothing ... I find a port after fifty years of
storm. I find the protection of a king, the conversation of a
philosopher, the charms of an agreeable man, united in one
who for sixteen years consoled me in misfortune and sheltered
me from my enemies. If one can be certain of anything it is
of the character of the King of Prussia.” 2 However . . .

In November of this same year Voltaire thought he would
improve his finances by investing in Saxon bonds, despite
Frederick’s prohibition of such investments. The bonds rose,
and Voltaire profited; but his agent, Hirsch, tried to black-
mail him by threatening to publish the transaction. Voltaire
“sprang at his throat and sent him sprawling.” Frederick
learned of the affair and fell into a royal rage. “I shall want
him at the most another year,” he said to La Mettrie; “one
squeezes the orange and throws away the rind.” La Mettrie,
perhaps anxious to disperse his rivals, took care to report
this to Voltaire. The suppers were resumed, “but,” wrote
Voltaire, “the orange rind haunts my dreams. . . . The man

l Braudes, Main Currents, i, 3*

« Tallentyre, 226, 280.

VOLTAIRE

who fell from the top of a steeple, and finding the falling
through the air soft, said, ‘Good, provided it lasts,’ was not a
little as I am.”

He half desired a break ; for he was as homesick as only a
Frenchman can be. The decisive trifle came in 1752. Mau-
pertuis, the great mathematician whom Frederick had im-
ported from France with so many others in an attempt to
arouse the German mind by direct contact with the “Enlight-
enment,” quarreled with a subordinate mathematician, Koenig,
over an interpretation of Newton. Frederick entered into the
dispute on the side of Maupertuis ; and Voltaire, who had more
courage than caution, entered it on the side of Koenig. “Un-
luckily for me,” he wrote to Mme. Denis, “I am also an author,
and in the opposite camp to the King. I have no sceptre, but
I have a pen.” About the same time Frederick was writing to
his sister : “The devil is incarnate in my men of letters ; there
is no doing anything with them. These fellows have no intelli-
gence except for society. ... It must be a consolation to ani-
mals to see that people with minds are often no better than
they.” 1 It was now that Voltaire wrote against Maupertuis
his famous “Diatribe of Dr. Akakia.” He read it to Fred-
erick, who laughed all night over it, but begged Voltaire not
to publish it. Voltaire seemed to acquiesce; but the truth
was that the thing was already sent to the printer, and the
author could not bring himself to practise infanticide on the
progeny of his pen. When it appeared Frederick burst into
flame, and Voltaire fled from the conflagration.

At Frankfort, though in territory quite outside Frederick’s
jurisdictio'n, he was overtaken and arrested by the King’s
agents, and told that he could not go on until he surrendered
Frederick’s poem, the Palladium, which had not been adapted
for polite society, and out-Pucelled Voltaire’s Pucelle itself.
But the terrible manuscript was in a trunk which had been
lost on the way; and for weeks, till it came, Voltaire was kept
almost in prison. A book-seller to whom he owed something

3 - In Sainte-Beuve, i, 218.

THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY

240

thought it an opportune moment to come and press for the
payment of his bill; Voltaire, furious, gave him a blow on the
ear; whereupon Voltaire’s secretary, Collini, offered comfort
to the man by pointing out, “Sir, you have received a box
on the ear from one of the greatest men in the world.” 1

Freed at last, he was about to cross the frontier into France,
when word came that he was exiled. The hunted old soul
hardly knew where to turn; for a time he thought of going
to Pennsylvania — one may imagine his desperation. He spent
the March of 1754 seeking “an agreeable tomb” in the neigh-
borhood of Geneva, safe from the rivJl autocrats of Paris and
Berlin ; at last he bought an old estate called Les D Slices; set-
tled down to cultivate his garden and regain his health; and
when his life seemed to be ebbing away into senility, entered
upon the period of his noblest and greatest work.

V. LES DEUCES : THE ESSAY ON MORALS

What was the cause of his new exile? That he had pub-
lished in Berlin “the most ambitious, the most voluminous, the
most characteristic, and the most daring of his works.” 2 Its
title was no small part of it : Essai sur les moeurs et V esprit
des Nations, et sur les principaux faits de Vhistoire depuis
Charlemagne jusqu'a Louis XIII — an Essay on the Morals
and the Spirit of the Nations from Charlemagne to Louis
XIII. He had begun it at Cirey for Mme. du Chatelet,
spurred on to the task by her denunciation of history as she
is writ.

It is “an old almanac,” she had said. “What does it matter
to me, a Frenchwoman living on my estate, to know that Egil
succeeded Haquin in Sweden, and that Ottoman was the son
of Ortogrul? I have read with pleasure the history of the
Greeks and the Romans; they offered me certain pictures
which attracted me. But I have never yet been able to finish
any long history of our modern nations. I can see scarcely

i Morley, 146,
a Tallentyre, 29L

VOLTAIRE

241

anything in them but confusion; a host of minute events
without connection or sequence, a thousand battles which set-
tled nothing. I renounced a study which overwhelms the mind
without illuminating it.”

Voltaire had agreed; he had made his Ingenu say, “History
is nothing more than a picture of crimes and misfortunes”;
and he was to write to Horace Walpole (July 15, 1768):
“Truly the history of the Yorkists and Lancastrians, and
many others, is much like reading the history of highway
robbers.” But he had expressed to Mme. du Chatelet the
hope that a way out might lie in applying philosophy to his-
tory, and endeavoring to trace, beneath the flux of political
events, the history of the human mind. 1 “Only philosophers
should write history,” he said. 2 3 “In all nations, history is dis-
figured by fable, till at last philosophy comes to enlighten
man ; and when it does finally arrive in the midst of this dark-
ness, it finds the human mind so blinded by centuries of error,
that it can hardly undeceive it ; it finds ceremonies, facts and
monuments, heaped up to prove lies.” 8 “History,” he con-
cludes, “is after all nothing but a pack of tricks which we play
upon the dead” ; 4 we transform the past to suit our wishes*
for the future, and in the upshot “history proves that any-
thing can be proved by history.”

He worked like a miner to find in this “Mississippi of false-
hoods” 5 the grains of truth about the real history of man-
kind. Year after year he gave himself to preparatory stud-
ies : a History of Russia , a History of Charles XII , The Age
of Louis XIV , and The Age of Louis XIII; and through these
tasks he developed in himself that unflagging intellectual con-
science which enslaves a man to make a genius. “The Jesuit
P&re Daniel, who produced a History of France , had placed

1 Robertson, 23; M or ley, 215; Tallentyre, Voltaire in Hia Letters, New
York, 1919, p. 222.

2 Pellissier, 213.

3 Essai sur les Moeurs , Introduction.

4 In Morley, 220.

5 Matthew Arnold’s description of history.

«42 THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY

before him in the Royal Library of Paris 1200 volumes of
documents and manuscripts; spent an hour or so looking
through them; and then, turning to Father Tournemine, the
former teacher of Voltaire, dismissed the matter by declaring
that all this material was ‘useless old paper which he had no
need of for the purpose of writing his history.’ ” 1 Not so
Voltaire: he read everything on his subject that he could lay
his hands on ; he pored over hundreds of volumes of memoirs ;
he wrote hundreds of letters to survivors of famous events;
and even after publishing his works he continued to study,
and improved every edition.

But this gathering of material was only preparatory ; what
was needed was a new method of selection and arrangement.
Mere facts would not do— even if, as so seldom happens, they
were facts. “Details that lead to nothing are to history what
baggage is to an army, impedimenta; we must look at things
in the large, for the very reason that the human mind is
so small, and sinks under the weight of minutiae.” 2 “Facts”
should be collected by annalists and arranged in some kind
of historical dictionary where one might find them at need,
as one finds words. What Voltaire sought was a unify-
ing principle by which the whole history of civilization in
Europe could be woven on one thread; and he was convinced
that this thread was the history of culture. He was resolved
that his history should deal , not with kings but with move-
ments, forces, and masses ; not with nations but with the human
race; not with wars but with the march of the human mind.
“Battles and revolutions are the smallest part of the plan;
squadrons and battalions conquering or being conquered,
towns taken and retaken, are common to all history. . . .
Take away the arts and the progress of the mind, and you will
find nothing” in any age “remarkable enough to attract the
attention of posterity.” 8 “I wish to write a history not of

J Brandes, Frangois de Voltaire .

2 In Morley, 275,

* Voltaire in His Letters 3 40-41.

VOLTAIRE

ms

wars, but of society; and to ascertain how men lived in the
anterior of their families, and what were the arts which they
commonly cultivated. . . . My object is the history of the
human mind, and not a mere detail of petty facts; nor am I
concerned with the history of great lords . . . ; but I want
to know what were the steps by which men passed from bar-
barism to civilization.” 1 This rejection of Kings from his-
tory was part of that democratic uprising which at last re-
jected them from government; the Essai sur les Mceurs began
the dethronement of the Bourbons.

And so he produced the first philosophy of history — the
first systematic attempt to trace the streams of natural causa-
tion in the development of the European mind; it was to be
expected that such an experiment should follow upon the
abandonment of supernatural explanations : history could not
come into its own until theology gave way. According to
Buckle, Voltaire’s book laid the basis of modern historical sci-
ence; Gibbon, Niebuhr, Buckle and Grote were his grateful
debtors and followers ; he was the caput NUi of them all, and
is still unsurpassed in the field which he first explored.

But why did his greatest book bring him exile? Because,
by telling the truth, it offended everybody. It especially en-
raged the clergy by taking the view later developed by Gibbon,
that the rapid conquest of paganism by Christianity had dis-
integrated Rome from within and prepared it to fall an easy
victim to the invading and immigrating barbarians. It en-
raged them further by giving much less space than usual to
Judea and Christendom, and by speaking of China, India and
Persia, and of their faiths, with the impartiality of a Martian ;
in this new perspective a vast and novel world was revealed;
every dogma faded into relativity; the endless East took on
something of the proportions given it by geography ; Europe
suddenly became conscious of itself as the experimental penin-
sula of a continent and a culture greater than its own. How
could it forgive a European for so unpatriotic a revelation?

l In Buckle, History of Civilization, I, 580.

THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY

£44

The King decreed that this Frenchman who dared to think of
himself as a man first and a Frenchman afterward should
never put foot upon the soil of France again.

VI. FERNET : OANDIDE

Les Delices had been a temporary home, a centre from which
Voltaire might prospect to find a shelter of more permanence.
He found it in 1758 at Ferney, just inside the Swiss line
near France ; here he would be secure from the French power,
and yet near to French refuge if the Swiss Government should
trouble him. This last change ended his Wander jahre. His
fitful r unnin gs to and fro had not been all the result of
nervous restlessness; they had reflected, too, his ubiquitous
insecurity from persecution; only at sixty-four did he find a
house that could be also his home. There is a passage at the
end of one of his tales, “The Travels of Scarmentado,” which
almost applies to its author : “As I had now seen all that was
rare or beautiful on earth, I resolved for the future to see
nothing but my own home ; I took a wife, and soon suspected
that she deceived me; but notwithstanding this doubt I still
found that of all conditions of life this was much the happi-
est.” He had no wife, but he had a niece — which is better
for a man of genius. “We never hear of his wishing to be in
Paris. . . . There can be no doubt that this wise exile pro-
longed his days.” 1

He was happy in his garden, planting fruit trees which he
did not expect to see flourish in his lifetime. When an ad-
mirer praised the work he had done for posterity he answered,
“Yes, I have planted 4*000 trees.” He had a kind word for
everybody, but could be forced to sharper speech. One day
he asked a visitor whence he came. “From Mr. Haller’s.”
“He is a great man,” said Voltaire ; “a great poet, a great nat-
juralist, a great philosopher, almost a universal genius.”

1 Morley, 239.

VOLTAIRE

245

“What you say, sir, is the more admirable, as Mr. Haller does
not do you the same justice.” “Ah,” said Voltaire, “perhaps
we are both mistaken.” 1

Femey now become the intellectual capital of the world;
every learned man or enlightened ruler of the day paid his
court either in person or by correspondence. Here came scep-
tical priests, liberal aristocrats, and learned ladies ; here came
Gibbon and Boswell from England; here came d’Alembert,
Helvetius, and the other rebels of the Enlightenment ; and
countless others. At last the entertainment of this endless
stream of visitors proved too expensive even for Voltaire; he
complained that he was becoming the hotel-keeper for all Eu-
rope. To one acquaintance who announced that he had come
to stay for six weeks, Voltaire said: “What is the difference
between you and Don Quixote? He mistook inns for cha-
teaux, and you mistake this chateau for an inn.” “God pre-
serve me from my friends,” he concluded; “I will take care of
my enemies myself.”

Add to this perpetual hospitality, the largest correspond-
ence the world has ever seen, and the most brilliant. Letters
came from all sorts and conditions of men: a burgomaster
wrote from Germany asking “in confidence whether there is a
God or not,” and begging Voltaire to answer by return post; f
Gustavus III of Sweden was elated by the thought that Vol-
taire sometimes glanced at the North, and told him that this
was their greatest encouragement to do their best up there;
Christian VII of Denmark apologized for not establishing
at once all reforms ; Catherine II of Russia sent him beautiful
presents, wrote frequently, and hoped he would not consider
her importunate. Even Frederick, after a year of doldrums,
returned to the fold, and resumed his correspondence with the
King of Femey.

“You have done me great wrongs,” he wrote. “I have for-
given them all, and I even wish to forget them. But if you

1 Tallentyre, 349.
i Morley, 335.

m THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY

had not had to do with a madman in love with your noble
genius, you would not have gotten off so well. . . . Do you
want sweet things? Very well; I will tell you some truths.

I esteem in you the finest genius that the ages have borne ; I
admire your poetry, I love your prose. . . . Never has an
author before you had a tact so keen, a taste so sure and
delicate. You are charming in conversation ; you know how
to amuse and instruct at the same time. You are the most
seductive being that I know, capable of making yourself loved
by all the world when you choose. You have such graces of
mind that you can offend and yet at the same time deserve the
indulgence of those who know you. In short, you would be
perfect if you were not a man.” 1

Who would have expected so gay a host to become the ex-
ponent of pessimism? In youth, as a reveler in Paris’s salons,
he had seen the sunnier side of life, despite the Bastille; and
yet even in those careless days he had rebelled against the
unnatural optimism to which Leibnitz had given currency.
To an ardent young man who had attacked him in print, and
had contended with Leibnitz that this is “the best of all pos-
sible worlds,” Voltaire wrote, “I am pleased to hear, sir, that
you have written a little book against me. You do me too
much honor. . . „ When you have shown, in verse or otherwise,
why so many men cut their throats in the best of all pos-
sible worlds, I shall be exceedingly obliged to you. I await
your arguments, your verses, and your abuse ; and assure you
from the bottom of my heart that neither of us knows any-
thing about the matter. I have the honor to be,” etc.

Persecution and disillusionment had worn down his faith in
life; and his experiences at Berlin and Frankfort had taken
the edge from his hope. But both faith and hope suffered
most when, in November, 1755, came the news of the awful
earthquake at Lisbon, in which 30,000 people had been killed.
The quake had come on All Saints’ Day; the churches had
been crowded with worshippers ; and death, finding its enemies

iln Sainte-Beuve, i, 221.

VOLTAIRE

247

In close formation, had reaped a rich harvest. Voltaire was
shocked into seriousness and raged when he heard that the
French clergy were explaining the disaster as a punishment
for the sins of the people of Lisbon. He broke forth in a
passionate poem in which he gave vigorous expression to the
old dilemma: Either God can prevent evil and he will not;
or he wishes to prevent it and he cannot. He was not satis-
fied with Spinoza’s answer that good and evil are human terms,
inapplicable to the universe, and that our tragedies are trivial
things in the perspective of eternity.

I am a puny part of the great whole.

Yes; but all animals condemned to live,

All sentient things, born by the same stern law,

Suffer like me, and like me also die.

The vulture fastens on his timid prey,

And stabs with bloody beak the quivering limbs:

All’s well, it seems, for it. But in a while
An eagle tears the vulture into shreds ;

The eagle is transfixed by shafts of man;

The man, prone in the dust of battlefields,

Mingling his blood with dying fellow men,

Becomes in turn the food of ravenous birds.

Thus the whole world in every member groans.

All born for torment and for mutual death.

And o’er this ghastly chaos you would say
The ills of eacfy make up the good of all!

What blessedness ! And as, with quaking voice.

Mortal and pitiful ye cry, “All’s well,”

The universe belies you, and your heart
Refutes a hundred times your mind’s conceit. . 0 *

What is the verdict of the vastest mind?

Silence: the book of fate is closed to us.

Man is a stranger to his own research ;

He knows not whence he comes, nor whither goes,.
Tormented atoms in a bed of mud,

Devoured by death, a mockery of fate;

But thinking atomsu whose far-seeing eyes.

24)8

THE STORY OP PHILOSOPHY

Guided by thoughts, have measured the faint stars.

Our being mingles with the infinite ;

Ourselves we never see, or come to know.

This world, this theatre of pride and wrong,

Swarms with sick fools who talk of happiness. * . •

Once did I sing, in less lugubrious tone,

The sunny ways of pleasure’s general rule;

The times have changed, and, taught by growing age,

And sharing of the frailty of mankind,

Seeking a light amid the deepening gloom,

I can but suffer, and will not repine. 1

A few months later the Seven Years’ War broke out; Vol-
taire looked upon it as madness and suicide, the devastation of
Europe to settle whether England or France should win “a
Tew acres of snow” in Canada. On the top of this came a
public repty, by Jean Jacques Rousseau, to the poem on Lis-
bon. Man himself was to be blamed for the disaster, said
Rousseau; if we lived out in the fields, and not in the towns,
we should not be killed on so large a scale ; if we lived under
the sky, and not in houses, houses would not fall upon us.
Voltaire was amazed at the popularity won by this profound
theodicy ; and angry that his name should be dragged into the
dust by such a Quixote, he turned upon Rousseau “that most
terrible of all the intellectual weapons ever wielded by man,
the mockery of Voltaire.” 2 In three days, in 1751, he wrote
Candide.

Never was pessimism so gaily argued; never was man made
to laugh so heartily while learning that this is a world of woe.
And seldom has a story been told with such simple and hidden
art; it is pure narrative and dialogue; no descriptions pad it
out; and the action is riotously rapid. “In Voltaire’s fin-
gers,” said Anatole France, “the pen runs and laughs.” 3 It
is perhaps the finest short story in all literature.

1 Selected Works of Voltaire; London, 1911; pp. 8-5.

2 Tallentyre, 231.

s Introd. to Candide, Modern Library edition.

VOLTAIRE

Candide, as his name indicates, is a simple and honest lad,
son of the great Baron of Thunder-Ten-Trockh of West-
phalia, and pupil of the learned Pangloss.

Pangloss was professor of metaphysicotheologicocosmoni-
gology. . . . “It is demonstrable,” said he, “that all is
necessarily for the best end. Observe that the nose has been
formed to bear spectacles . . . legs were visibly designed
for stockings . . . stones were designed to construct
castles . . . pigs were made so that we might have pork
all the year round. Consequently, they who assert that all
is well have said a foolish thing ; they should have said all is
for the best.”

While Pangloss is discoursing, the castle is attacked by the
Bulgarian army, and Candide is captured and turned into a
soldier.

He was made to wheel about to the right and to the left,
to draw his rammer, to return his rammer, to present, to
fire, to march. . . . He resolved, one fine day in spring, to
go for a walk, marching straight before him, believing that
it was a privilege of the human as well as the animal species
to make use of their legs as they pleased. He had advanced
two leagues when he was overtaken by four heroes six feet
tall, who bound him and carried him to a dungeon. He was
asked which he would like the best, to be whipped six and
thirty times through all the regiment, or to receive at once
two balls of lead in his brain. He vainly said that human
will is free, and that he chose neither the one nor the other.
He was forced to make a choice ; he determined, in virtue of
that gift of God called liberty, to run the gauntlet six-and-
thirty times. He bore this twice . 1

Candide escapes, takes passage to Lisbon, and on board ship
meets Professor Pangloss, who tells how the Baron and Baroness
were murdered and the castle destroyed. “All this,” he con-
cludes, “was indispensable; for private misfortune makes the
general good, so that the more private misfortunes there are,

l Candide , p. 7.

250

THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY

the greater is the general good.” They arrive in Lisbon just
in time to be caught in the earthquake. After it is over they
tell each other their adventures and sufferings ; whereupon an
old servant assures them that their misfortunes are as nothing
compared with her own. “A hundred times I was on the point
of killing myself, but I loved life. This ridiculous foible is
perhaps one of our most fatal characteristics ; for is there any-
thing more absurd than to wish to carry continually a burden
which one can always throw down?” Or, as another character
expresses it, “All things considered, the life of a gondolier is
preferable to that of a doge ; but I believe the difference is so
trifling that it is not worth the trouble of examining.”

Candide, fleeing from the Inquisition, goes to Paraguay;
“there the Jesuit Fathers possess all, and the people nothing;
it is a masterpiece of reason and justice.” In a Dutch colony
he comes upon a negro with one hand, one leg, and a rag for
clothing. “When we work at the sugar canes,” the slave ex-
plains, “and the mill snatches hold of a finger, they cut off
a hand ; and when we try to run away, they cut off a leg. ...
This, is the price at which you eat sugar in Europe.” Can-
dide finds much loose gold in the unexplored interior; he re-
turns to the coast and hires a vessel to take him to France;
but the skipper sails off with the gold and leaves Candide phi-
losophizing on the wharf. With what little remains to him,
Candide purchases a passage on a ship bound for Bordeaux;
and on board strikes up a conversation with an old sage,
Martin.

“Do you believe,” said Candide, “that men have always
massacred one another as they do today, that they have al-
ways been liars, cheats, traitors, ingrates, brigands, idiots,
thieves, scoundrels, gluttons, drunkards, misers, envious, am-
bitious, bloody-minded, calumniators, debauchees, fanatics,
hypocrites and fools?”

“Do you believe,” said Martin, “that hawks have always
eaten pigeons when they have found them?”

“Without doubt,” said Candide.

VOLTAIRE

251

‘‘Well, then,” said Martin, “if hawks have always had the
same character, why should you imagine that men have
changed theirs?”

“Oh !” said Candide, “there is a vast deal of difference, for
free will — ”

And reasoning thus they arrived at Bordeaux . 1

We cannot follow Candide through the rest of his adven-
tures, which form a rollicking commentary on the difficulties
of medieval theology and Leibnitzian optimism. After suffer-
ing a variety of evils among a variety of men, Candide settles
down as a farmer in Turkey ; and the story ends with a final
dialogue between master and pupil :

Pangloss sometimes said to Candide :

“There is a concatenation of events in this best of all pos-
sible worlds: for if you had not been kicked out of a mag-
nificent castle; ... if you had not been put into the In-
quisition; if you had not walked over America; ... if you
had not lost all your gold; . . . you would not be here
eating preserved citrons and pistachio-nuts.”

“All that is very well,” answered Candide ; “but let us culti-
vate our garden.”

VH. THE ENCYCLOPEDIA AND THE PHILOSOPHIC DICTIONARY

The popularity of so irreverent a book as Candide gives us
some sense of the spirit of the age. The lordly culture of
Louis XIV’s time, despite the massive bishops who spoke so
eloquent a part in it, had learned to smile at dogma and
tradition. The failure of the Reformation to capture France
had left for Frenchmen no half-way house between infallibility
and infidelity; and while the intellect of Germany and Eng-
land moved leisurely in the lines of religious evolution, the
mind of France leaped from the hot faith which had mas-
sacred the Huguenots to the cold hostility with which La
Mettrie, Helvetius, Holbach and Diderot turned upon the re-
1P. 104.

252

THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY

ligion of their fathers. Let us look for a moment at the in-
telleetual environment in which the later Voltaire moved and
had his being.

La Mettrie (1709-51) was an army physician who had lost
his post by writing a Natural History of the Soul, and had
won exile by a work called Man a Machine . He had taken
refuge at the court of Frederick, who was himself something
of an advanced thinker and was resolved to have the very lat-
est culture from Paris. La Mettrie took up the idea of
mechanism where the frightened Descartes, like a boy who has
burned his fingers, had dropped it; and announced boldly that
all the world, not excepting man, was a machine. The soul is
material, and matter is soulful; but whatever they are they
act upon each other, and grow and decay with each other in
a way that leaves no doubt of their essential similarity and
interdependence. If the sold is pure spirit, how can enthusi-
asm warm the body, or fever in the body disturb the processes
of the mind? All organisms have evolved out of one original
germ, through the reciprocal action of organism and environ-
ment. The reason why animals have intelligence, and plants
none, is that animals move about for their food, while plants
take what comes to them. Man has the highest intelligence
because he has the greatest wants and the widest mobility;
“beings without wants are also without mind.”

Though La Mettrie was exiled for these opinions, Helve-
tius (1715—71), who took them as the basis of his book On
Man, became one of the richest men in France, and rose to
position and honor. Here we have the ethic, as in La Mettrie
the metaphysic, of atheism. All action is dictated by egoism,
self-love; “even the hero follows the feeling which for him is
associated with the greatest pleasure” ; and “virtue is egoism
furnished with a spy-glass.” 1 Conscience is not the voice of
God, but the fear of the police; it is the deposit left in us
from the stream of prohibitions poured over the growing soul

x Taine, The Ancient RSgime.

VOLTAIRE 258

by parents and teachers and press. Morality must be
founded not on theology but on sociology ; the changing needs
of society, and not any unchanging revelation or dogma, must
determine the good.

The greatest figure in this group was Denis Diderot (1713—
84). His ideas were expressed in various fragments from
his, own pen, and in the System of Nature of Baron d’Holbach
(1723-89), whose salon was the centre of Diderot’s circle.
“If we go back to the beginning,” says Holbach, “we shall
find that ignorance and fear created the gods ; that fancy, en-
thusiasm or deceit adorned or disfigured them; that weakness
worships them; that credulity preserves them; and that cus-
tom respects and tyranny supports them in order to make the
blindness of men serve its own interests.” Belief in God, said
Diderot, is bound up with submission to autocracy; the two
rise and fall together; and “men will never be free till the
last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest.”
The earth will come into its own only when heaven is destroyed.
Materialism may be an over-simplification of the world — all
matter is probably instinct with life, and it is impossible to
reduce the unity of consciousness to matter and motion; but
materialism is a good weapon against the Church, and must be
used till a better one is found. Meanwhile one must spread
knowledge and encourage industry; industry will make for
peace, and knowledge will make a new and natural morality.

These are the ideas which Diderot and d’Alembert labored
to disseminate through the great Encyclopedie which they is-
sued, volume by volume, from 1752 to 1772. The Church had
the first volumes suppressed ; and as the opposition increased,
Diderot’s comrades abandoned him ; but he worked on angrily,
invigorated by his rage. “I know nothing so indecent,” he
said, “as these vague declamations of the theologiaps against
reason. To hear them one would suppose that men could not
enter into the bosom of Christianity except as a herd of cattle
enters a stable.” It was, as Paine put it, the age of reason;

£54

THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY

these men never doubted that the intellect was the ultimate
human test of all truth and all good. Let reason be freed)
they said, and it would in a few generations build Utopia.
Diderot did not suspect that the erotic and neurotic Jean
Jacques Rousseau (171£-78), whom he had just introduced
to Paris, was carrying in his head, or in his heart, the seeds
of a revolution against this enthronement of reason ; a revolu-
tion which, armed with the impressive obscurities of Imman-
uel Kant, would soon capture every citadel of philosophy.

Naturally enough, Voltaire, who was interested in every-
thing, and had a hand in every fight, was caught up for a
time in the circle of the Encyclopedists; they were glad to
call him their leader; and he was not averse to their incense,
though some of their ideas needed a little pruning. They
asked him to write articles for their great undertaking, and
he responded with a facility and fertility which delighted
them. When he had finished this work he set about making
an encyclopedia of his own, which he called a Philosophic Dic-
tionary; with unprecedented audacity he took subject after
subject as the alphabet suggested them, and poured out under
each heading part of his inexhaustible resources of knowledge
and wisdom. Imagine a man writing on everything, and
producing a classic none the less ; the most readable and spark-
ling of Voltaire’s works aside from his romances ; every article
a model of brevity, clarity, and wit. “Some men can be
prolix in one small volume; Voltaire is terse through a hun-
dred.” 1 Here at last Voltaire proves that he is a philos-
opher.

He begins, like Bacon, Descartes and Locke and all the
modems, with doubt and a (supposedly) clean slate. “I have
taken as my patron saint St. Thomas of Didymus, who always
insisted on an examination with his own hands.” 2 He thanks
Bayle for having taught him the art of doubt. He rejects all
systems, and suspects that “every chief of a sect in philosophy

1 Robertson 87.

2 Philosophic Dictionary, New York, 1901 ; vol. ix, p. 198.

VOLTAIRE

255

has been a little of a quack.” 1 “The further I go, the more I
am confirmed in the idea that systems of metaphysics are for
philosophers what novels are for women.” 2 It is only charla-
tans who are certain. We know nothing of first principles. It
is truly extravagant to define God, angels, and minds, and to
know precisely why God formed the world, when we do not know
why we move our arms at will. Doubt is not a very agreeable
state, but certainty is a ridiculous one .” 3 “I do not know
how I was made, and how I was bom. I did not know at all,
during a quarter of my life, the causes of what I saw, or heard,
or felt. ... I have seen that which is called matter, both as
the star Sirius, and as the smallest atom which can be per-
ceived with the microscope ; and I do not know what this mat-
ter is.” 4

He tells a story of “The Good Brahmin,” who says, “I
wish I had never been born!”

“Why so ?” said I.

“Because,” he replied, “I have been studying these forty

years, and I find that it has been so much time lost I

believe that I am composed of matter, but I have never been
able to satisfy myself what it is that produces thought. I
am even ignorant whether my understanding is a simple fac-
ulty like that of walking or digesting, or if I think with my
head in the same manner as I take hold of a thing with my
hands. ... I talk a great deal, and when I have done
speaking I remain confounded and ashamed of what I have
said.”

The same day I had a conversation with an old woman, his
neighbor. I asked her if she had ever been unhappy for not
understanding how her soul was made? She did not even
comprehend my question. She had not, for the briefest mo-
ment in her life, had a thought about these subjects with
which the good Brahmin had so tormented himself. She be-

* Ibid., 42.

^ In Pellissier, 11, note.

8 Robertson, 122.

* Dictionary, article “Ignorance.”

256 THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY

lieved in the bottom of her heart in the metamorphoses of
Vishnu, and provided she could get some of the sacred water
of the Ganges in which to make her ablutions, she thought
herself the happiest of women. Struck with the happiness
of this poor creature, I returned to my philosopher, whom
I thus addressed:

“Are you not ashamed to be thus miserable when, not fifty
yards from you, there is an old automaton who thinks of
nothing and lives contented?”

‘You are right,” he replied. “I have said to myself a
thousand times that I should be happy if I were but as ig-
norant as my old neighbor; and yet it is a happiness which
I do not desire.”

This reply of the Brahmin made a greater impression on
me than anything that had passed. 1

Even if Philosophy should end in the total doubt of Mon-
taigne’s “ Que sais-je ?” 2 It is man’s greatest adventure, and
his noblest. Let us learn to be content with modest advances
in knowledge, rather than be forever weaving new systems out
of our mendacious imagination.

We must not say, Let us begin by inventing principles
whereby we may be able to explain everything; rather we
must say, Let us make an exact analysis of the matter, and
then we shall try to see, with much diffidence, if it fits in with
any principle. 3 . . . The Chancellor Bacon had shown the
road which science might follow. . . . But then Descartes
appeared and did just the contrary of what he should have
done: instead of studying nature, he wished to divine her.

. . . This best of mathematicians made only romances in
philosophy. 4 ... It is given us to calculate, to weigh, to
measure, to observe; this is natural philosophy; almost all
the rest is chimera. 5

1 Romances j 450 f.

2 “What do I know?”

s In Pellissier, 28, note.

4 Voltaire’ 8 Prose , ed. Cohn and Woodward; Boston, 1918; p. 54u

« In Pellissier, 29-30.

VOLTAIRE

HOT

Vm. ECRABEZ L’INFAME

Under ordinary circumstances it is probable that Voltaire
would never have passed out of the philosophic calm of this
courteous scepticism to the arduous controversies of his later
years. The aristocratic circles in which he moved agreed so
readily with his point of view that there was no incentive to
polemics ; even the priests smiled with him over the difficulties
of the faith, and cardinals considered whether, after all, they
might not yet make him into a good Capuchin. What were
the events that turned him from the polite persiflage of agnos-
ticism to a bitter anti-clericalism which admitted no compro-
mise, but waged relentless war to “crush the infamy” of ec-
clesiasticism?

Not far from Ferney lay Toulouse, the seventh city of
France. In Voltaire’s day the Catholic clergy enjoyed ab-
solute sovereignty there; the city commemorated with fres-
coes the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes (an edict which had
given freedom of worship |o Protestants), and celebrated as a
great feast the day of the Massacre of St. Bartholomew. No
Protestant in Toulouse could be a lawyer, or a physician, or
an apothecary, or a grocer, or a book-seller, or a printer ; nor
could a Catholic keep a Protestant servant or clerk — in 1748
a woman had been fined 3000 francs for using a Protestant
midwife.

Now it happened that Jean Calas, a Protestant of Toulouse,
had a daughter who became a Catholic, and a son who hanged
himself, presumably because of disappointment in business.
There was a law in Toulouse that every suicide should be
placed naked on a hurdle, with face down, drawn thus through
the streets, and then hanged on a gibbet. The father, to avert
this, asked his relatives and his friends to testify to a natural
death. In consequence, rumor began to talk of murder, and
to hint that the father had killed the son to prevent his im-
minent conversion to Catholicism. Calas was arrested, put

258

THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY

to the torture, and died soon after (1761). His family, ru-
ined and hunted, fled to Ferney, and sought the aid of Vol-
taire. He took them into his home, comforted them, and
marveled at the story of medieval persecution which they told.

About the same time (1762) came the death of Elizabeth
Sirvens; again rumor charged that she had been pushed into
a well just as she was about to announce her conversion to
Catholicism. That a timid minority of Protestants would
hardly dare to behave in this way was a rational consideration,
and therefore out of the purview of rumor. — In 1765 a young
man by the name of La Barre, aged sixteen, was arrested on
the charge of having mutilated crucifixes. Subjected to tor-
ture, he confessed his guilt ; his head was cut off, and his body
was flung into the flames, while the crowd applauded. A copy
of Voltaire’s Philosophic Dictionary, which had been found
on the lad, was burned with him.

For almost the first time in his life, Voltaire became a thor-
oughly serious man. When d’Alembert, disgusted equally
with state, church and people, wrote that hereafter he would
merely mock at everything, Voltaire answered, “This is not
a time for jesting; wit does not harmonize with massacres.
. . . Is this the country of philosophy and pleasure? It is
rather the country of the Massacre of St. Bartholomew.” It
was with Voltaire now as with Zola and Anatole France in the
case of Dreyfus; this tyrannous injustice lifted him up; he
ceased to be merely a man of letters, and became a man of ac-
tion too ; he laid aside philosophy for war, or rather turned his
philosophy into relentless dynamite. “During this time not a
smile escaped me without my reproaching myself for it as for
a crime.” It was now that he adopted his famous motto,
Ecrasez Vmfame, and stirred the soul of France against the
abuses of the church. He began to pour forth such intellec-
tual fire and brimstone as melted mitres and sceptres, broke
the power of the priesthood in France, and helped to over-
throw a throne. He sent out a call to his friends and fol-
lowers, summoning them to battle: “Come, brave Diderot,

VOLTAIRE

259

intrepid d’Alembert, ally yourselves; . . . overwhelm the fa-
natics and the knaves, destroy the insipid declamations, the
miserable sophistries, the lying history, . . . the absurdities
without number ; do not let those who have sense be subjected
to those who have, none ; and the generation which is being
born will owe to us its reason and its liberty.” 1

Just at this crisis an effort was made to buy him off;
through Mme. de Pompadour he received an offer of a cardi-
nal’s hat as the reward of reconciliation with the Church . 2 *
As if the rule of a few tongue-tied bishops could interest a
man who was the undisputed sovereign of the world of intel-
lect! Voltaire refused; and like another Cato, began to end
all his letters with “Crush the infamy.” He sent out his
Treatise on Toleration: he said he would have borne with the
absurdities of dogma had the clergy lived up to their sermons
and had they tolerated differences; but “subtleties of which
not a trace can be found in the Gospels are the source of
the bloody quarrels of Christian history.” 8 “The man who
says to me, ‘Believe as I do, or God will damn you,’ will pres-
ently say, ‘Believe as I do, or I shall assassinate you.’ ” 4 *
“By what right could a being created free force another to
think like himself ?” 6 “A fanaticism composed of supersti-
tion and ignorance has been the sickness of all the centuries.” 6
No such perpetual peace as the Abbe de St.-Pierre had pleaded
for could ever be realized unless men learned to tolerate one
another’s philosophic, political and religious differences.
The very first step towards social health was the destruction
of the ecclesiastical power in which intolerance had its root.

The Treatise on Toleration was followed up with a Niagara
of pamphlets, histories, dialogues, letters, catechisms, dia-
tribes, squibs, sermons, verses, tales, fables, commentaries and

1 Correspondence, Nov. 11, 1765.

2 Tallentyre, 319; questioned by some.

» Selected Works, p. 62.

4l6id., 65.

c Essai sur les Moeurs; Prose Works, p. 14.

Qlbid., p. 26.

THE STORY OE PHILOSOPHY

essays, under Voltaire’s own name and under a hundred pseu-
dottyms — “the most astonishing pell-mell of propaganda ever
put out by one man.” 1 Never was philosophy phrased so
clearly, and with such life; Voltaire writes so well that one
does not realize that he is writing philosophy. He said of
himself, over-modestly, “I express myself clearly enough: I
am like the little brooks, which are transparent because they
are not deep.” 2 And so he was read ; soon everybody, even
the clergy, had his pamphlets ; of some of them 300,000 copies
Were sold, though readers were far fewer then than now; noth-
ing like it had ever been seen in the history of literature,
“Big books,” he said, “are out of fashion.” And so he sent
forth his little soldiers, week after week, month after month,
resolute and tireless, surprising the world with the fertility of
his thought and the magnificent energy of his seventy years.
As Helvetius put it, Voltaire had crossed the Rubicon, and
stood before Rome. 3

He began with a “higher criticism” of the authenticity and
reliability of the Bible; he takes much of his material from
Spinoza, more of it from the English Deists, most of it from
the Critical Dictionary of Bayle (1647—1706) ; but how bril-
liant and fiery their material becomes in his hands ! One pam-
phlet is called “The Questions of Zapata,” a candidate for the
priesthood; Zapata asks, innocently, “How shall we proceed
to show that the Jews, whom we burn by the hundred, were for
four thousand years the chosen people of God?” * — and he
goes on with questions which lay bare the inconsistencies of
narrative and chronology in the Old Testament. “When two
Councils anathematize each other, as has often happened,,
which of them is infallible?” At last, “Zapata, receiving no
answer, took to preaching God in all simplicity. He an-
nounced to men the common Father, the rewarder, punisher,

1 Robertson, 112.

2 In Sainte-Beuve, ii, 146.

a In Pellissier, 101.

4 Selected Works, p. 26. Voltaire himself was something of an anti-
Semite, chiefly because of his not quite admirable dealings with the financier

VOLTAIRE

m

and pardoner. He extricated the truth from the lies, and
separated religion from fanaticism; he taught and practised
virtue. He was gentle, kindly, and modest; and he was
burned at Valladolid in the year of grace 1631.” 1

Under the article on “Prophecy” in the Philosophic Dic-
tionary, he quotes Rabbin Isaac’s Bulwark of Faith against
the application of Hebrew prophecies to Jesus, and then goes
on, ironically: “Thus these blind interpreters of their own
religion and their own language, combated with the Church,
and obstinately maintained that this prophecy cannot in any
manner regard Jesus Christ.” 2 3 Those were dangerous days,
in which , one was compelled to say what one meant without
saying it, and the shortest line to one’s purpose was anything
but straight. Voltaire likes to trace Christian dogmas and
rites to Greece, Egypt and India, and thinks that these adap-
tations were not the least cause of the success of Christianity
in the ancient world. Under the article on “Religion” he
asks, slyly, “After our own holy religion, which doubtless is
the only good one, what religion would be the least objection-
able?” — and he proceeds to describe a faith and worship di-
rectly opposed to the Catholicism of his day. “Christianity
must be divine,” he says, in one of his most unmeasured sallies,
“since it has lasted 1,700 years despite the fact that it is so
full of villainy and nonsense.” 8 He shows how almost all
ancient peoples had similar myths, and hastily concludes that
the myths are thereby proved to have been the inventions of
priests : “the first divine was the first rogue who met the first
fool.” However, it is not religion itself which he attributes
to the priests, but theology. It is slight differences in theol-
ogy that have caused so many bitter disputes and religious
wars. “It is not the ordinary people . . . who have raised
these ridiculous and fatal quarrels, the sources of so many
horrors. , . . Men fed by your labors in a comfortable idle-

i Ibid., 26-35.

a IX, 21.

3 Eased sur les Mosurs, part ii, ch. 9 ; in Morley 822.

262 THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY

ness, enriched by your sweat and your misery, struggled for
partisans and slaves; they inspired you with a destructive
fanaticism, that they might be your masters ; they made you
superstitious not that you might fear God but that you might
fear them.” 1

Let it not be supposed from all this that Voltaire was quite
without religion. He decisively rejects atheism; 2 * so much
so that some of the Encyclopedists turned against him, say-
ing, “Voltaire is a bigot, he believes in God.” In “The Ig-
norant Philosopher” he reasons towards Spinozist pantheism,
but then recoils from it as almost atheism. He writes to Di-
derot :

I confess that I am not at all of the opinion of Saunder-
son, who denies a God because he was born sightless. I am,
perhaps, mistaken; but in his place I should recognize a
great Intelligence who had given me so many substitutes for
sight; and perceiving, on reflection, the wonderful relations
between all things, I should have suspected a Workman in-
finitely able. If it is very presumptuous to divine what He
is, and why He has made everything that exists, so it seems
to me very presumptuous to deny that He exists. I am ex-
ceedingly anxious to meet and talk with you, whether you
think yourself one of His works, or a particle drawn, of
necessity, from eternal and necessary matter. Whatever
you are, you are a worthy part of that great whole which I
do not understand . 8

To Holbach he points out that the very title of his book,
the System of Nature , indicates a divine organizing intelli-
gence. On the other hand he stoutly denies miracles and the
supernatural efficacy of prayer :

I was at the gate of the convent when Sister Fessue said
to Sister Confite: “Providence takes a visible care of me;

1 Selected Works, 63.

2 Cf . The Sage and the Atheist, chs. 9 and 10.

8 Voltaire in His Letters, p. 8L,

VOLTAIRE

you know how I love my sparrow; he would have been dead if
I had not said nine Ave-Marias to obtain his cure.” ... A
metaphysician said to her: “Sister, there is nothing so
good as Ave-Marias, especially when a girl pronounces them
in Latin in the suburbs of Paris ; but I cannot believe that
God has occupied himself so much with your sparrow, pretty
as it is ; I pray you to believe that he has other things to at-
tend to. . . .” Sister Fessue: “Sir, this discourse savors
of heresy. My confessor . . . will infer that you do not
believe in Providence.” Metaphysician : “I believe in a gen-
eral Providence, dear Sister, which has laid down from all
eternity the law which governs all things, like light from the
sun; but I believe not that a particular Providence changes
the economy of the world for your sparrow.” 3

“His Sacred Majesty, Chance, decides everything.” 2 True
prayer lies not in asking for a violation of natural law but in
the acceptance of natural law as the unchangeable will of God . 3

Similarly, he denies free will . 4 As to the soul he is an ag-
nostic: “Four thousand volumes of metaphysics will not
teach us what the soul is.” 5 Being an old man, he would like
to believe in immortality, but he finds it difficult.

Nobody thinks of giving an immortal soul to the flea ;
why then to an elephant, or a monkey, or my valet ? 6 . . .

A child dies in its mother’s womb, just at the moment when
it has received a soul. Will it rise again foetus, or boy, or
man? To rise again — to be the same person that you were
— you must have your memory perfectly fresh and present ;
for it is memory that makes your identity. If your memory
be lost, how will you be the same man? 7 . . . Why do man-
kind flatter themselves that they alone are gifted with &

1 Dictionary, art. “Providence.”

^ Correspondence, Feb. 26, 17 6T.

* Romances, p. 412.

4 The Ignorant Philosopher .

* Dictionary, art. “Soul.”

6 In Morley, ed. 1886 ; p. 286.

* Dictionary, art. “Resurrection.”

THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY

264

spiritual and immortal principle? . • . Perhaps from their
inordinate vanity. I am persuaded that if a peacock could
speak he would boast of his soul, and would affirm that it
inhabited his magnificent tail . 1

And in this earlier mood he rejects also the view that belief
in immortality is necessary for morality : the ancient Hebrews
were without it, just when they were the “chosen people” ; and
Spinoza was a paragon of morality.

In later days he changed his mind. He came to feel that
belief in God has little moral value unless accompanied by be-
lief in an immortality of punishment and reward. Perhaps,
“for the common people (la ca/naille ) a rewarding and aveng-
ing God” is necessary. Bayle had asked, If a society of athe-
ists could subsist? — Voltaire answers, “Yes, if they are also
philosophers.” 2 But men are seldom philosophers; “if there
is a hamlet, to be good it must have a religion.” 3 “I want
my lawyer, my tailor, and my wife to believe in God,” says “A”
in “A, B, C” ; “so, I imagine, I shall be less robbed and less
deceived.” “If God did not exist it would be necessary to
invent him.” 4 “I begin to put more store on happiness and
life than on truth” ; 5 — a remarkable anticipation, in the midst
of the Enlightenment, of the very doctrine with which Imman-
uel Kant was later to combat the Enlightenment. He defends
himself gently against his friends the atheists; he addresses
Holbach in the article on “God” in the Dictionary :

You yourself say that belief in God . . . has kept some
men from crime; this alone suffices me. When this belief
prevents even ten assassinations, ten calumnies, I hold that
all the world should embrace it. Religion, you say, has
produced countless misfortunes; say rather the supersti-
tion which reigns on our unhappy globe. This is the cruel-

1 Romances, p. 411.

2 In Pellissier, 169.

a Dictionary, art. “Religion.”

4 In Pellissier, 172.

3 Correspondence, Sept. 11, 178b.

VOLTAIRE

est enemy of the pure worship due to the Supreme Being.
Let us detest this monster which has always torn the bosom
of its mother; those who combat it are the benefactors of the
human race ; it is a serpent which chokes religion in its em-
brace ; we must crush its head without wounding the mother
whom it devours.”

This distinction between superstition and religion is funda*-
mental with him. He accepts gladly the theology of the
,Sermon on the Mount, and -acclaims Jesus in tributes which
could hardly be matched even with the pages of saintly ecstasy.
He pictures Christ among the sages, weeping over the crimes
that have been committed in his name. At last he built his
own church, with the dedication, “Deo erexit Voltaire”; the
only church in Europe, he said, that was erected to GodL
He addresses to God a magnificent prayer ; and in the article
“Theist” he expounds his faith finally and clearly :

The theist is a man firmly persuaded of the existence of a
supreme being as good as he is powerful, who has formed all
things ... ; who punishes, without cruelty, all crimes, and
recompenses with goodness all virtuous actions. . . . Re-
united in this principle with the rest of the universe, he does
not join any of the sects which all contradict one another.
His religion is the most ancient and the most widespread;
for the simple worship of a God preceded all the systems of
the world. He speaks a language which all peoples under-
stand, while they do not understand one another. He has
brothers from Pekin to Cayenne, and he counts all the sages
for his fellows. He believes that religion consists neither in
the opinions of an unintelligible metaphysic, nor in vain
shows, but in worship and in justice. To do good is his wor-
ship, to submit to God is his creed. The Mohammedan cries
out to him, “Beware if you fail to make the pilgrimage to
Mecca !” — the priest says to him, “Curses on you if you do
not make the trip to Notre Dame de Lorette!” He laughs
at Lorette and at Mecca : but he succors the indigent and de-
fends the oppressed.

266 THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY

IX. VOLTAIRE AND ROUSSEAU

Voltaire was so engrossed in the struggle against ecclesi-
astical tyranny that during the later decades of his life he was
compelled almost to withdraw from the war on political
corruption and oppression. “Politics is not in my line: I
have always confined myself to doing my little best to make
men less foolish and more honorable.” He knew how complex
a matter political philosophy can become, and he shed his
certainties as he grew. “I am tired of all these people who
govern states from the recesses of their garrets” ; 1 “these
legislators who rule the world at two cents a sheet ; . . . un-
able to govern their wives or their households they take great
pleasure in regulating the universe.” 2 It is impossible to
settle these matters with simple and general formulae, or by
dividing all people into fools and knaves on the one hand,
and on the other, ourselves. “Truth has not the name of a
party”; and he writes to Vauvenargues : “It is the duty of
a man like you to have preferences, but not exclusions.” 8

Being rich, he inclines towards conservatism, for no worse
reason than that which impels the hungry man to call for a
change. His panacea is the spread of property: ownership
gives personality and an uplifting pride. “The spirit of
property doubles a man’s strength. It is certain that the
possessor of an estate will cultivate his own inheritance better
than that of another.” 4

He refuses to excite himself about forms of government.
Theoretically he prefers a republic, but he knows its flaws:
it permits factions which, if they do not bring on civil war, at
least destroy national unity ; it is suited only to small states
protected by geographical situation, and as yet unspoiled and
untorn with wealth; in general “men are rarely worthy to
govern themselves.” Republics are transient at best; they

1 Correspondence, Sept. 18, 1768.

2 In Pellissier, 287, note, and 236.

8 Pellissier, 23; Morley, 86.

4 Dictionary, art. “Property.”

VOLTAIRE

267

are the first form of society, arising from the union of
families; the American Indians lived in tribal republics, and
Africa is full of such democracies. But differentiation of
economic status puts an end to these egalitarian governments ;
and differentiation is the inevitable accompaniment of develop-
ment. “Which is better,” he asks, “a monarchy or a re-
public?”— and he replies: “For four thousand years this
question has been tossed about. Ask the rich for an answer
— they all want aristocracy. Ask the people- — they want
democracy. Only the monarchs want monarchy. How then
has it come about that almost the entire earth is governed
by monarchs? Ask the rats who proposed to hang a bell
about the neck of the cat.” 1 But when a correspondent
argues that monarchy is the best form of government he an-
swers: “Provided Marcus Aurelius is monarch; for other-
wise, what difference does it make to a poor man whether he
is devoured by a lion or by a hundred rats?” 2

Likewise, he is almost indifferent to nationalities, like a
traveled man; he has hardly any patriotism in the usual sense
of that word. Patriotism commonly means, he says, that one
hates every country but one’s own. If a man wishes his
country to prosper, but never at the expense of other coun-
tries, he is at the same time an intelligent patriot and a citizen
of the universe. 3 Like a “good European” he praises Eng-
land’s literature and Prussia’s king while France is at war with
both England and Prussia. So long as nations make a prac-
tice of war, he says, there is not much to choose among them.

For he hates war above all else. “War is the greatest of
all crimes; and yet there is no aggressor who does not color
his crime with the pretext of justice.” 4 * “It is forbidden to
kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in
large numbers and to the sound of trumpets.” 6 He has a

1 Dictionary, art. “Fatherland.”

2 Correspondence, June 20, 1777.

8 Pellissier, 222.

4 The Ignorant Philosopher.

& Dictionary, art. “War.”

THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY

£68

terrible “General Reflection on Man,” at the end of the article
on “Man” in the Dictionary:

Twenty years are required to bring man from the state
of a plant, in which he exists in the womb of his mother, and
from the state of an animal, which is his condition in in-
fancy, to a state in which the maturity of reason begins to
make itself felt. Thirty centuries are necessary in which to
discover even a little of his structure. An eternity would
be required to know anything of his soul. But one moment
suffices in which to kill him.

Does he therefore think of revolution as a remedy? No.
For first of all, he distrusts the people: “When the people
undertake to reason, all is lost.” 1 The great majority are
always too busy to perceive the truth until change has made
the truth an error ; and their intellectual history is merely the
replacement of one myth by another. “When an old error
is established, politics uses it as a morsel which the people
have put into their own mouths, until another superstition
comes along to destroy this one, and politics profits from the
second error as it did from the first.” 2 And then again,
inequality is written into the very structure of society, and
can hardly be eradicated while men are men and life is a
struggle. “Those who say that all men are equal speak the
greatest truth if they mean that all men have an equal right
to liberty, to the possession of their goods, and to the pro-
tection of the laws” ; but “equality is at once the most natural
and the most chimerical thing in the world : natural when it is
limited to rights, unnatural when it attempts to level goods
and powers .” 8 “Not all citizens can be equally strong; but
they can all be equally free ; it is this which the English have
won. . . . To be free is to be subject to nothing but the
laws.” 4 This was the note of the liberals, of Turgot and
Condorcet and Mirabeau and the other followers of Voltaire

1 Correspondence, April 1, 1766.

2 Voltaire’ 8 Prose, p. 15.

a Dictionary, art. “Equality.”

4 Art. “Government.”

VOLTAIRE

who hoped to make a peaceful revolution ; it could not quite
satisfy the oppressed, who called not so much for liberty as
for equality, equality even at the cost of liberty. Rousseau,
voice of the common man, sensitive to the class distinctions
which met him at every turn, demanded a leveling ; and when
the Revolution fell into the hands of his followers, Marat and
Robespierre, equality had its turn, and liberty was guillotined.

Voltaire was sceptical of Utopias to be fashioned by human
legislators who would create a brand new world out of their
imaginations. Society is a growth in time, not a syllogism in
logic ; and when the past is put out through the door it comes
in at the window. The problem is to show precisely by what
changes we can diminish misery and injustice in the world in
which we actually live . 1 In the “Historical Eulogy of Rea-
son,” Truth, the daughter of Reason, voices her joy at the
accession of Louis XVI, and her expectation of great reforms;
to which Reason replies : “My daughter, you know well that
I too desire these things, and more. But all this requires time
and thought. I am always happy when, amid many disap-
pointments, I obtain some of the amelioration I longed for.”
Yet Voltaire too rejoiced when Turgot came to power, and
wrote: “We are in the golden age up to our necks!” 2 — now
would come the reforms he had advocated: juries, abolition of
the tithe, an exemption of the poor from, all taxes, etc. And
had he not written that famous letter? —

Everything that I see appears to be throwing broadcast
the seed of a revolution which must some day inevitably
come, but which I shall not have the pleasure of witnessing.
The French always come late to things, but they do come at
last. Light extends so from neighbor to neighbor, that
there will be a splendid outburst on the first occasion; and
then there will be a rare commotion! The young are for-
tunate ; they will see fine things . 8

iPellissier, 283.

2 In Sainte-Beuve, 3. 234.

3 Correspondence, April 2, 1764.

270

THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY

Yet he did not quite realize what was happening about him;
and he never for a moment supposed that in this “splendid
outburst” all France would accept enthusiastically the phi-
losophy of this queer Jean Jacques Rousseau who, from Geneva
and Paris, was thrilling the world with sentimental romances
and revolutionary pamphlets. The complex soul of France
seemed to have divided itself into these two men, so different
and yet so French. Nietzsche speaks of “la gaya scienza, the
light feet, wit, fire, grace, strong logic, arrogant intellec-
tuality, the dance of the stars” — surely he was thinking of
Voltaire. Now beside Voltaire put Rousseau: all heat and
fantasy, a man with noble and jejune visions, the idol of
la bourgeoise gentile-femme, announcing like Pascal that the
heart has its reasons which the head can never understand.

In these two men we see again the old clash between intellect
and instinct. Voltaire believed in reason always: “we can,
by speech and pen, make men more enlightened and better.” J
Rousseau had little faith in reason ; he desired action ; the risks
of revolution did not frighten him ; he relied on the sentiment
of brotherhood to re-unite the social elements scattered by
turmoil and the uprooting of ancient habits. Let laws be
removed, and men would pass into a reign of equality and
justice. When he sent to Voltaire his Discourse on the Origin
of Inequality, with its arguments against civilization, letters,
and science, and for a return to the natural condition as seen
in savages and animals, Voltaire replied: “I have received,
sir, your new book against the human species, and I thank
you for it. . . . No one has ever been so witty as you are in
trying to turn us into brutes; to read your book makes one
long to go on all fours. As, however, it is now some sixty
years since I gave up the practice, I feel that it is unfor-
tunately impossible for me to resume it.” 1 2 He was chagrined
to see Rousseau’s passion for savagery continue into the
Social Contract: “Ah, Monsieur,” he writes to M. Hordes,

1 Selected Works, 62.

2 Correspondence, Aug. 80, 1765,

VOLTAIRE

271

“you see now that Jean J acques resembles a philosopher as
a monkey resembles a man.” 1 He is the “dog of Diogenes
gone mad .” 2 Yet he attacked the Swiss authorities for
burning the book, holding to his famous principle: “I do
not agree with a word that you say, but I will defend to the
death your right to say it .” 3 And when Rousseau was
fleeing from a hundred enemies Voltaire sent him a cordial
invitation to come and stay with him at Les Delices. What a
spectacle that would have been!

Voltaire was convinced that all this denunciation of civili-
zation was boyish nonsense; that man was incomparably better
off under civilization than under savagery; he informs Rous-
seau that man is by nature a beast of prey, and that civilized
society means a chaining of this beast, a mitigation of his
brutality, and the possibility of the development, through
social order, of the intellect and its joys. He agrees that
things are bad : “A government in which it is permitted a
certain class of men to say, ‘Let those pay taxes who work;
we should not pay, because we do not work , 5 is no better than
a government of Hottentots . 55 Paris has its redeeming
features, even amidst its corruption. In “The World as It
Goes , 55 Voltaire tells how an angel sent Babouc to report on
whether the city of Persepolis should be destroyed; Babouc
goes, and is horrified with the vices he discovers; but after
a time “he began to grow fond of a city the inhabitants of
which were polite, affable and beneficent, though they were
fickle, slanderous and vain. He was much afraid that Per-
sepolis would be condemned. He was even afraid to give in
his account. This he did, however, in the following manner.
He caused a little statue, composed of different metals, of
earth and of stones (the most precious and the most vile) to
be cast by one of the best founders of the city, and carried
it to the angel. ‘Wilt thou break , 5 said he, ‘this pretty statue
because it is not wholly composed of gold and diamonds ? 555

1 Ibid., Mar. 1765.

2 In Sainte-Beuve, i. 230.

8 Voltaire in His Letters , 65.

278

THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY

The angel resolved to think no more of destroying Persepolis,
but to leave “the world as it goes.” After all, when one tries
to change institutions without having changed the nature of
men, that unchanged nature will soon resurrect those insti-
tutions.

Here was the old vicious circle ; men form institutions, and
institutions form men; where could change break into this
ring? Voltaire and the liberals thought that intellect could
break the ring by educating and changing men, slowly and
peacefully ; Rousseau and the radicals felt that the ring could
be broken only by instinctive and passionate action that would
break down the old institutions and build, at the dictates of
the heart, new ones under which liberty, equality and
fraternity would reign. Perhaps the truth lay above the
divided camps: that instinct must destroy the old, but that
only intellect can build the new. Certainly the seeds of re-
action lay fertile in the radicalism of Rousseau: for instinct
and sentiment are ultimately loyal to the ancient past which
has begotten them, and to which they are stereotyped adapta-
tions: after the catharsis of revolution the needs of the heart
would recall supernatural religion and the “good old days”
of routine and peace; after Rousseau would come Chateau-
briand, and De Stael, and De Maistre, and Eant.

X. DENOUEMENT

Meanwhile the old “laughing philosopher” was cultivating
his garden at Ferney; this “is the best thing we can do on
earth.” He had asked for a long life: “my fear is that I
shall die before I have rendered service ” ; 1 but surely now he
had done his share. The records of his generosity are endless.
‘‘Everyone, far or near, claimed his good offices; people con-
sulted him, related the wrongs of which they were the victims,
and solicited the help of his pen and his credit.” 2 Poor

1 Correspondence, Aug. 25, 1766,

2 Sainte-Beuve, i, 235.

VOLTAIRE

m

people guilty of some misdemeanor were his especial care; he
would secure a pardon for them and then set them up in some
honest occupation, meanwhile watching and counselling them.
When a young couple who had robbed him went down on their
knees to beg his forgiveness, he knelt to raise them, telling
them that his pardon was freely theirs, and that they should
kneel only for God’s. 1 One of his characteristic undertak-
ings was to bring up, educate, and provide a dowry for the
destitute niece of Corneille. “The little good I have done,”
he said, “is my best work. . . . When I am attacked I fight
like a devil; I yield to no one; but at bottom I am a good
devil, and I end by laughing.” 2

In 1770 his friends arranged a subscription to have a bust
made of him. The rich had to be forbidden to give more than
a mite, for thousands asked the honor of contributing. Fred-
erick inquired how much he should give; he was told, “A
crown piece, sire, and your name.” Voltaire congratulated
him on adding to his cultivation of the other sciences this en-
couragement of anatomy by subscribing for the statue of a
skeleton. He demurred to the whole undertaking on the
ground that he had no face left to be modeled. “You would
hardly guess where it ought to be. My eyes have sunk in
three inches ; my cheeks are like old parchment ; . . . the few
teeth I had are gone.” To which d’Alembert replied:
“Genius . . . has always a countenance which genius, its
brother, will easily find.” 3 When his pet, Bellet-Bonne,
kissed him, he said it was “Life kissing Death.”

He was now eighty-three ; and a longing came over him to
see Paris before he died. The doctors advised him not to
undertake so arduous a trip; but “if I want to commit a
fplly,” he answered, “nothing will prevent me”; he had lived
so long, and worked so hard, that perhaps he felt he had a
right to die in his own way, and in that electric Paris from

1 Robertson, 71.

2 Ibid., 67.

8 Tallentyre, 497.

m THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY

which he had been so long exiled. And so he went, wears'
mile after weary mile, across France; and when, his coach en-
tered the capital his bones hardly held together. He went at
once to the friend of his youth, d’Argental: “I have left off
dying to come and see you,” he said. The next day his room
was stormed by three hundred visitors, who welcomed him as a
king; Louis XVI fretted with jealousy. Benjamin Franklin
was among the callers, and brought his grandson for Voltaire’s
blessing; the old man put his thin hands upon the youth’s head
and bade him dedicate himself to “God and Liberty.”

He was so ill now that a priest came to shrive him. “From
whom do you come, M. l’Abbe?” asked Voltaire. “From God
Himself,” was the answer. “Well, well, sir,” said Voltaire;
“your credentials?” 1 The priest went away without his prey.
Later Voltaire sent for another abbe, Gautier, to come and
hear his confession ; Gautier came, but refused Voltaire absolu-
tion until he should sign a profession of full faith in Catholic
doctrine. Voltaire rebelled; instead, he drew up a statement
which he gave to his secretary, Wagner: “I die adoring God,
loving my friends, not hating my enemies, and detesting
superstition. (Signed) Voltaire. February 28, 1778.” 2

Though sick and tottering, he was driven to the Academy,
through tumultuous crowds that clambered on his carriage
and tore into souvenirs the precious pelisse which Catherine
of Russia had given him. “It was one of the historic events
of the century. No great captain returning from a pro-
longed campaign of difficulty and hazard crowned by the most
glorious victory, ever received a more splendid and far-
resounding greeting.” 3 At the Academy he proposed a
revision of the French dictionary ; he spoke with youthful fire,
and offered to undertake all such part of the work as would
come under the letter A- At the close of the sitting he said,
“Gentlemen, I thank you in the name of the alphabet.” To

1 Tallentyre, 535.

2 Ibid., 538.

s Morley, 262.

VOLTAIRE 275

which the chairman, Chastellux, replied: “And we thank
you in the name of letters.”

Meanwhile his play, Irdne, was being performed at the
theatre ; against the advice of the physicians again, he insisted
on attending. The play was poor; but people marveled not
so much that a man of eighty-three should write a poor play,
but that he should write any play at all ; 1 and they drowned the
speech of the players with repeated demonstrations in honor
of the author. A stranger, entering, supposed himself to be
in a madhouse, and rushed back frightened into the street. 2

When the old patriarch of letters went home that evening he
was almost reconciled to death. He knew that he was ex-
hausted now; that he had used to the full that wild and
marvelous energy which nature had given to him perhaps
more than to any man before him. He struggled as he felt
life being torn from him; but death could defeat even Voltaire.
The end came on May 30, 1778.

■He was refused Christian burial in Paris; but his friends
set him up grimly in a carriage, and got him out of the city
by pretending that he was alive. At Scellieres they found
a priest who understood that rules were not made for geniuses ;
and the body was buried in holy ground. In 1791 the
National Assembly of the triumphant Revolution forced
Louis XVI to recall Voltaire’s remains to the Pantheon. The
dead ashes of the great flame that had been were escorted
through Paris by a procession of 100,000 men and women,
while 600,000 flanked the streets. On the funeral car were
the words: “He gave the human mind a great impetus; he
prepared us for freedom.” On Ms tombstone only three
words were necessary:

HERE LIES VOLTAIRE

i Tallentyre, 525.
*Ibid., 545.

CHAPTER VI

IMMANUEL KANT AND GERMAN IDEALISM

I. ROADS TO KANT

N EVER has a system of thought so dominated an epoch
as the philosophy of Immanuel Kant dominated the
thought of the nineteenth century. After almost
three-score years of quiet and secluded development, the un-
canny Scot of Koenigsberg roused the ‘world from its “dog-
matic slumber,” in 1781, with his famous Critique of Pure
Reason; and from that year to our own the “critical phi-
losophy” has ruled the speculative roost of Europe. The
philosophy of Schopenhauer rose to brief power on the
romantic wave that broke in 1848; the theory of evolution
swept everything before it after 1859; and the exhilarating
iconoclasm of Nietzsche won the center of the philosophic
stage as the century came to a close. But these were second-
ary and surface developments; underneath them the strong
and steady current of the Kantian movement flowed on,
always wider and deeper ; until today its essential theorems are
the axioms of all mature philosophy. Nietzsche takes Kant
for granted, and passes on ; 1 Schopenhauer calls the Critique
“the most important work in German literature,” and con-
siders any man a child until he has understood Kant; 5
Spencer could not understand Kant, and for precisely that
reason, perhaps, fell a little short of the fullest philosophic
stature. To adapt Hegel’s phrase about Spinoza: to be a
philosopher, one must first have been a Kantian.

Therefore let us become Kantians at once. But it cannot

» The Will to Power, vol. ii, part I.

a The World as WUl and Idea , London, 1883; vol. ii, p. 30.

270

KANT AND GERMAN IDEALISM 2T¥

be done at once, apparently; for in philosophy, as in politics,
the longest distance between two points is a straight line.
Kant is the last person in the world whom we should read on
Kant. Our philosopher is like and unlike Jehovah ; he speaks
through clouds, but without the illumination of the lightning'
flash. He disdains examples and the concrete; they would
have made his book too long, he argued. 1 (So abbreviated;
it contains some 800 pages.) Only professional philosophers
were expected to read him; and these would not need illustra-
tions. Yet when Kant gave the MS. of the Critique to his
friend Herz, a man much versed in speculation, Herz returned
it half read, saying he feared insanity if he went on with it.
What shall we do with such a philosopher?

Let us approach him deviously and cautiously, beginning;
at a safe and respectful distance from him; let us start at
various points on the circumference of the subject,, and then
grope our way towards that subtle center where the most
difficult of all philosophies has its secret and its treasure.

1. From Voltaire to Kant

The road here is from theoretical reason without religious
faith, to religious faith without theoretical reason. Voltaire
means the Enlightenment, the Encyclopedia, the Age of
Reason. The warm enthusiasm of Francis Bacon had in-
spired all Europe (except Rousseau) with unquestioning con-
fidence in the power of science and logic to solve at last all
problems, and illustrate the “infinite perfectibility” of man.
Condorcet, in prison, wrote his Historical Tableau of the
Progress of the Human Spirit (1793), which spoke the sub-
lime trust of the eighteenth century in knowledge and reason,
and asked no other key to Utopia than universal education.
Even the steady Germans had their Aufklarung, their
rationalist, Christian Wolff, and their hopeful Lessing. And

i The Critique of Pure Reason , London, 1881; vol. Si, p. xxvii. All subset
guent references are to volume two.

THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY

278

the excitable Parisians of the Revolution dramatized this
apotheosis of the intellect by worshipping the ’“Goddess of
Reason,” — impersonated by a charming lady of the streets.

In Spinoza this faith in reason had begotten a magnificent
structure of geometry and logic: the universe was a mathe-
matical system, and could be described d. priori, by pure
deduction from accepted axioms. In Hobbes the rationalism
of Racon had become an uncompromising atheism and ma-
terialism ; again nothing was to exist but “atoms and the
void.” From Spinoza to Diderot the wrecks of faith lay in
the wake of advancing reason : one by one the old dogmas dis-
appeared; the Gothic cathedral of medieval belief, with its
delightful details and grotesques, collapsed ; the ancient
God fell from his throne along with the Bourbons, heaven
faded into mere sky, and hell became only an emotional
expression. Helvetius and Holbach made atheism so fashion-
able in the salons of France that even the clergy took it up;
and La Mettrie went to peddle it in Germany, under the
auspices of Prussia’s king. When, in 1784, Lessing shocked
Jacobi by announcing himself a follower of Spinoza, it was a
sign that faith had reached its nadir, and that Reason was
triumphant.

David Hume, who played so vigorous a role in the Enlight-
enment assault on supernatural belief, said that when reason
is against a man, he will soon turn against reason. Religious
faith and hope, voiced in a hundred thousand steeples rising
out of the soil of Europe everywhere, were too deeply rooted
in the institutions of society and in the heart of man, to
permit their ready surrender to the hostile verdict of reason;
it was inevitable that this faith and this hope, so condemned,
would question the competence of the judge, and would call
for an examination of reason as well as of religion. What
was this intellect that proposed to destroy with a syllogism the
beliefs of thousands of years and millions of men? Was it
infallible? Or was it one human organ like any other, with
Strictest limits to its functions and its powers? The time

KANT AND GERMAN IDEALISM

279

had come to judge this judge, to examine this ruthless Rev-
olutionary Tribunal that was dealing out death so lavishly
to every ancient hope. The time had come for a critique
of reason.

#. From Loclce to Kant

The way had been prepared for such an examination by
the work of Locke, Berkeley and Hume ; and yet, apparently,
their results too were hostile to religion.

John Locke (1632-1704) had proposed to apply to psy-
chology the inductive tests and methods of Francis Bacon;
in his great Essay on Human Understanding (1689) reason,
for the first time in modem thought, had turned in upon
itself, and philosophy had begun to scrutinize the instrument
which it so long had trusted. This introspective movement
in philosophy grew step by step with the introspective novel as
developed by Richardson and Rousseau; just as the senti-
mental and emotional color of Clarissa Harlowe and La
Nouvelle Heloise had its counterpart in the philosophic
exaltation of instinct and feeling above intellect and reason.

How does knowledge arise? Have we, as some good people
suppose, innate ideas, as, for example, of right and wrong,
and God, — ideas inherent in the mind from birth, prior to all
experience? Anxious theologians, worried lest belief in the
Deity should disappear because God had not yet been seen
in any telescope, had thought that faith and morals might be
strengthened if their central and basic ideas were shown to
be inborn in every normal soul. But Locke, good Christian,
though he was, ready to argue most eloquently for “The Rea-
sonableness of Christianity,” could not accept these supposi-
tions; he announced, quietly, that all our knowledge comes
from experience and through our senses — that “there is noth-
ing in the mind except what was first in the senses.” The
mind is at birth a clean sheet, a tabula rasa ; and sense-
experience writes upon it in a thousand ways, until sensation

280

THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY

begets memory and memory begets ideas. All of which
seemed to lead to the startling conclusion that since only ma-
terial things can effect our sense, we know nothing but matter,
and must accept a materialistic philosophy. If sensations are
the stuff of thought, the hasty argued, matter must be the
material of mind.

Not at all, said Bishop George Berkeley (1684-1758) ;
this Lockian analysis of knowledge proves rather that matter
does not exist except as a form of mind. It was a brilliant
idea — to refute materialism by the simple expedient of show-
ing that we know of no such thing as matter; in all Europe
only a Gaelic imagination could have conceived this meta-
physical magic. But see how obvious it is, said the Bishop :
has not Locke told us that all our knowledge is derived from
sensation? Therefore all our knowledge of anything is
merely our sensations of it, and the ideas derived from these
sensations. A “thing” is merely a bundle of perceptions —
i. e., classified and interpreted sensations. You protest that
your breakfast is much more substantial than a bundle of
perceptions; and that a ha mme r that teaches you carpentry
through your thumb has a most magnificent materiality.
But your breakfast is at first nothing but a congeries of
sensations of sight and smell and touch; and then of taste;
and then of internal comfort and warmth. Likewise, the
hammer is a bundle of sensations of color, size, shape, weight,
touch, etc. ; its reality for you is not in its materiality, but in
the sensations that come from your thumb. If you had no
senses, the hammer would not exist for you at all; it might
strike your dead thumb forever and yet win from you not the
slightest attention. It is only a bundle of sensations, or a
bundle of memories; it is a condition of the mind. All
matter, so far as we know it, is a mental condition ; and the
only reality that we know directly is mind. So much for
materialism.

But the Irish Bishop had reckoned without the Scotch
sceptic. David Hume (1711-1776) at the age of twenty*

KANT AND GERMAN IDEALISM 881

six shocked all Christendom with his highly heretical Treatise
on Human Nature ,- — one of the classics and marvels of modern
philosophy. We know the mind, said Hume, only as we
know matter : by perception, though it be in this case internal.
Never do we perceive any such entity as the “mind”; we
perceive merely separate ideas, memories, feelings, etc. The
mind is not a substance, an organ that has ideas; it is only
an abstract name for the series of ideas; the perceptions*
memories and feelings are the mind; there is no observable
“soul” behind the processes of thought. The result appeared
to be that Hume had as effectually destroyed mind as
Berkeley had destroyed matter. Nothing was left; and phi-
losophy found itself in the midst of ruins of its own making.
No wonder that a wit advised the abandonment of the con-
troversy, saying: “No matter, never mind.”

But Hume was not content to destroy orthodox religion by
dissipating the concept of soul; he proposed also to destroy
science by dissolving the concept of law. Science and phi-
losophy alike, since Bruno and Galileo, had been making much
of natural law, of “necessity” in the sequence of effect upon
cause; Spinoza had reared his majestic metaphysics upon this
proud conception. But observe, said Hume, that we never
perceive causes, or laws; we perceive events and sequences,
and infer causation and necessity ; a law is not an eternal and
necessary decree to which events are subjected, but merelj
a mental summary and shorthand of our kaleidoscopic experh
ence; we have no guarantee that the sequences hitherto ob-
served will re-appear unaltered in future experience. “Law”
is an observed custom in the sequence of events ; but there is no
“necessity” in custom.

Only mathematical formulas have necessity — they alone are
inherently and unchangeably true; and this merely because
such formulae are tautological— the predicate is already con-
tained in the subject; “3X3 = 9” is an eternal and necessary
truth only because “3 X 3” and “9” are one and the same
thing differently expressed; the predicate adds nothing to

m, THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY

the subject. Science, then, must limit itself strictly to
Mathematics and direct experiment; it cannot trust to un-
verified deduction from “laws.” “When we run through
libraries, persuaded of these principles,” writes our uncanny
sceptic, “what havoc must we make ! If we take in our hands
any volume of school metaphysics, for instance, let us ask,
‘Does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity
or number?’ No. ‘Does it contain any experimental reason-
ing concerning matter of fact and existence?’ No. Commit
it then to the flames, for it can contain nothing but sophistry
and illusion.” 1

Imagine how the ears of the orthodox tingled at these words.
Here the epistemological tradition — the inquiry into the na-
ture, sources, and validity of knowledge — had ceased to be a
support to religion; the sword with which Bishop Berkeley
had slain the dragon of materialism had turned against the
immaterial mind and the immortal soul; and in the turmoil
science itself had suffered severe injury. No wonder that
when Immanuel Kant, in 1775, read a German translation
of the works of David Hume, he was shocked by these results,
and was roused, as he said, from the “dogmatic slumber” in
which he had assumed without question the essentials of reli-
gion and the bases of science. Were both science and faith
to be surrendered to the sceptic? What could be done to save
them?

3. From Rousseau to Kant

To the argument of the Enlightenment, that reason makes
for materialism, Berkeley had essayed the answer that matter
does not exist. But this had led, in Hume, to the retort that
by the same token mind does not exist either. Another an-
swer was possible — that reason is no final test. There are
some theoretical conclusions against which our whole being
rebels ; we have no right to presume that these demands of our
nature must be stifled at the dictates of a logic which is after

l Quoted in Royce, The Spirit of Modem Philosophy, Boston, 1892; p. 98.

KANT AND GERMAN IDEALISM

all but the recent construction of a frail and deceptive part
of us. How often our instincts and feelings push aside the
little syllogisms which would like us to behave like geometrical
figures, and make love with mathematical precision! Some-
times, no doubt, — and particularly in the novel complexities
and artificialities of urban life, — reason is the better guide;
but in the great crises of life, and in the great problems of
conduct and belief, we trust to our feelings rather than to our
diagrams. If reason is against religion, so much the worse
for reason!

Such, in effect, was the argument of Jean Jacques Rous-
seau (1712—1778), who almost alone, in France, fought the
materialism and atheism of the Enlightenment. What a fate
for a delicate and neurotic nature, to have been cast amidst
the robust rationalism and the almost brutal hedonism 1 of
the Encyclopedists ! Rousseau had been a sickly youth,
driven into brooding and introversion by his physical weak-
ness and the unsympathetic attitude of his parents and
teachers ; he had escaped from the stings of reality into a hot-
house world of dreams, where the victories denied him in life
and love could be had for the imagining. His Confessions
reveal an unreconciled complex of the most refined senti-
mentality with an obtuse sense of decency and honor; and
through it all an unsullied conviction of his moral superiority; 2

In 1749 the Academy of Dijon offered a prize for an essay
on the question, “Has the Progress of the Sciences and the
Arts Contributed to Corrupt, or to Purify, Morals?” Rous-
seau’s essay won the prize. Culture is much more of an evil
than a good, he argued — with all the intensity and sincerity of
one who, finding culture out of his reach, proposed to prove it
worthless. Consider the frightful disorders which printing
has produced in Europe. Wherever philosophy arises, the
moral health of the nation decays. “It was even a saying
among the philosophers themselves that since learned men had

1 The doctrine that all behavior is motived by the pursuit of pleasure.

2 Cf. Confessions, bk. X; vol. ii, p. 184.

THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY

m

appeared, honest men were nowhere to be found.” “I venture
to declare that a state of reflection is contrary to nature ; and
that a thinking man” (an “intellectual,” as we would now 1
say) “is a depraved animal.” It would be better to abandon
our over-rapid development of the intellect, and to aim rather
at training the heart and the affections. Education does not,
make a man good, it only makes him clever — usually for mis-
chief. Instinct and feeling are more trustworthy than reason.

In his famous novel, La Nouvelle HSloise (1761), Rousseau,
illustrated at great length the superiority of feeling to intel-
lect; sentimentality became the fashion among the ladies of
the aristocracy, and among some of the men ; France was for
a century watered with literary, and then with actual, tears;
and the great movement of the European intellect in the
eighteenth century gave way to the romantic emotional litera-
ture of 1789-1848. The current carried with it a strong
revival of religious feeling; the ecstasies of Chateaubriand’s
(genie du Christicmisme (1802) were merely an echo of the
“Confession of Faith of the Savoyard Vicar” which Rousseau
included in his epochal essay on education — Emile (1762).
The argument of the “Confession” was briefly this: that,
though reason might be against belief in God and immortality,,
feeling was overwhelmingly in their favor ; why should we not,
trust in instinct here, rather than yield to the despair of an
arid scepticism?

When Rant read Emile he omitted his daily walk under the,
linden trees, in order to finish the book at once. It was an
event in his life to find here another man who was groping his.
way out of the darkness of atheism, and who boldly affirmed
the priority of feeling over theoretical reason in these supra-
sensual concerns. Here at last was the second half of the
answer to irreligion; now finally all the scoffers and doubters
would be scattered. To put these threads of argument to-
gether, to unite the ideas of Berkeley and Hume with the feel-
ings of Rousseau, to save religion from reason, and yet at the

KANT AND GERMAN IDEALISM 286

same time to save science from scepticism — this was the mis-
sion of Immanuel Kant.

Eat who was Immanuel Kant?

n. KANT HIMSELF

He was born at Konigsberg, Prussia, in 1724. Except
for a short period of tutoring in a nearby village, this quiet
little professor, who loved so much to lecture on the geography
and ethnology of distant lands, never left his native city.
He came of a poor family, which had left Scotland some
hundred years before Immanuel’s birth. His mother was a
Pietist, — i. e., a member of a religious sect which, like the
Methodists of England, insisted on the full strictness and
rigor of religious practice and belief. Our philosopher was
so immersed in religion from morning to night that on the one
hand he experienced a reaction which led him to stay away
from church all through his adult life ; and on the other hand
he kept to the end the sombre stamp of the German Puritan,
and felt, as he grew old, a great longing to preserve for him-
self and the world the essentials, at least, of the faith so deeply
inculcated in him by his mother.

But a young man growing up in the age of Frederick and
Voltaire could not insulate himself from the sceptical current
of the time. Kant was profoundly influenced even by the
men whom later he aimed to refute, and perhaps most of all
by his favorite enemy, Hume ; we shall see later the remarkable
phenomenon of a philosopher transcending the conservatism
of his maturity and returning in almost his last work, and
at almost the age of seventy, to a virile liberalism that would
have brought him martyrdom had not his age and his fame
protected him. Even in the midst of his work of religious
restoration we hear, with surprising frequency, the tones of
another Kant whom we might almost mistake for a Voltaire.
Schopenhauer thought it “not the least merit of Frederick

286

THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY

the Great, that under his government Kant, could develop
himself, and dared to publish his Critique of Pure Reason.
Hardly under any other government would a salaried pro-
fessor” (therefore, in Germany, a government employee)
“have ventured such a thing. Kant was obliged to promise
the immediate successor of the great King that he would write
no more.” 1 It was in appreciation of this freedom that Kant
dedicated the Critique to Zedlitz, Frederick’s far-sighted and
progressive Minister of Education.

In 1755 Kant began his work as private lecturer at the
University of Konigsberg. For fifteen years he was left in
this lowly post ; twice his applications for a professorship were
refused. At last, in 1770, he was made professor of logic and
metaphysics. After many years of experience as a teacher,
he wrote a text-book of pedagogy, of which he used to say
that it contained many excellent precepts, none of which he
had ever applied. Yet he was perhaps a better teacher than
writer; and two generations of students learned to love him.
One of his practical principles was to attend most to those
pupils who were of middle ability; the dunces, he said, were
beyond all help, and the geniuses would help themselves.

Nobody expected him to startle the world with a new meta-
physical system ; to startle anybody seemed the very last crime
that this timid and modest professor would commit. He him-
self had no expectations in that line; at the age of forty-two
he wrote: “I have the fortune to be a lover of metaphysics;
but my mistress has shown me few favors as yet.” He spoke
in those days of the “bottomless abyss of metaphysics,” and
of metaphysics as “a dark ocean without shores or lighthouse,”
strewn with many a philosophic wreck. 2 He could even at-
tack the metaphysicians as those who dwelt on the high
towers of speculation, “where there is usually a great deal of
wind.” 8 He did not foresee that the greatest of all meta-
physical tempests was to be of his own blowing.

1 The World as Will and Idea, London, 1883; vol. ii, p. 133.

2 In Paulsen, Immanuel Kant ; New York, 1910; p. 82.

# Ibid., p. 56.

KANT AND GERMAN IDEALISM 287

During these quiet years his interests were rather physical
than metaphysical. He wrote on planets, earthquakes, fire,
winds, ether, volcanoes, geography, ethnology, and a hundred
other things of that sort, not usually confounded with
metaphysics. His Theory of the Heavens (1755) proposed
something very similar to the nebular hypothesis of Laplace,
and attempted a mechanical explanation of all sidereal motion
and development. All the planets, Kant thought, have been
or will be inhabited; and those that are farthest from the
sun, having had the longest period of growth, have probably
a higher species of intelligent organisms than any yet pro-
duced on our planet. His Anthropology (put together in
1798 from the lectures of a life-time) suggested the possibility
of the animal origin of man. Kant argued that if the human
infant, in early ages when man was still largely at the mercy
of wild animals, had cried as loudly upon entering the world
as it does now, it would have been found out and devoured by
beasts of prey ; that in all probability, therefore, man was very
different at first from what he had become under civilization^
And then Kant went on, subtly: “How nature brought about
such a development, and by what causes it was aided, we know
not. This remark carries us a long way. It suggests the
thought whether the present period of history, on the occa-
sion of some great physical revolution, may not be followed
by a third, when an orang-outang or a chimpanzee would
develop the organs which serve for walking, touching, speak-
ing, into the articulated structure of a human being, with a
central organ for the use of understanding, and gradually
advance under the training of social institutions.” Was this
use of the future tense Kant’s cautiously indirect way of
putting forth his view of how man had really developed from
the beast? 1

So we see the slow growth of this simple little man, hardly
five feet tall, modest, shrinking, and yet containing in his
head, or generating there, the most far-reaching revolution

i So Wallace suggests: Kant, Philadelphia, 1882: p. 115.

388

THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY

in modern philosophy. Kant’s life, says one biographer,
passed like the most regular of regular verbs. “Rising,
coffee-drinking, writing, lecturing, dining, walking,” says
Heine,- — “each had its set time. And when Immanuel Kant,
in his gray coat, cane in hand, appeared at the door of his,
house, and strolled towards the small avenue of linden trees
which is still called ‘The Philosopher’s Walk,’ the neighbors
knew it was exactly half-past-three by the clock. So he;
promenaded up and down, during all seasons ; and when the
weather was gloomy, or the gray clouds threatened rain,
his old servant Lampe was seen plodding anxiously after,
with a large umbrella under his arm, like a symbol of Pru-
dence.”

He was so frail in physique that he had to take severe
measures to regimen himself ; he thought it safer to do this
without a doctor; so he lived to the age of eighty. At seventy
he wrote an essay “On the Power of the Mind to Master the
Feeling of Illness by Force of Resolution.” One of his
favorite principles was to breathe only through the nose,
especially when out-doors ; hence, in autumn, winter and
spring, he would permit no one to talk to him on his daily
walks; better silence than a cold. He applied philosophy
even to holding up his stockings — by bands passing up into
his trousers’ pockets, where they ended in springs contained
in small boxes . 1 He thought everything out carefully before
acting; and therefore remained a bachelor all his life long.
Twice he thought of offering his hand to a lady ; but he. re-
flected so long that in one case the lady married a bolder man,
and in the other the lady removed from Konigsberg before the
philosopher could make up his mind. Perhaps he felt, like
Nietzsche, that marriage would hamper him in the honest pur-
suit of truth; “a married man,” Talleyrand used to say,
“will do anything for money.” And Kant had written, at
twenty-two, with all the fine enthusiasm, of omnipotent youth:
“I have already fixed upon the line which I am resolved to

i Introd. to Kant’s Critique of Practical Reason; London, 1909; p. xiiL

KANT AND GERMAN IDEALISM 289

keep. I will enter on my course, and nothing shall prevent
me from pursuing it.’* 1

And so he persevered, through poverty and obscurity,
sketching and writing and rewriting his magnum opus for
almost fifteen years; finishing it only in 1781, when he was
fifty-seven years old. Never did a man mature so slowly; and
then again, never did a book so startle and upset the phil-
osophic world.

m. THE CRITIQUE OP PURE REASON 2

What is meant by this title? Critique is not precisely a
criticism, but a critical analysis ; Kant is not attacking “pure
reason,” except, at the end, to show its limitations ; rather he
i hopes to show its possibility, and to exalt it above the impure
knowledge which comes to us through the distorting channels
of sense. For “pure” reason is to mean knowledge that does
not come through our senses, but is independent of all sense
experience ; knowledge belonging to us by the inherent nature
and structure of the mind.

At the very outset, then, Kant flings down a challenge to
Locke and the English school: knowledge is not all derived
from the senses. Hume thought he had shown that there is
no soul, and no science; that our minds are but our ideas in
procession and association ; and our certainties but probabil-
ities in perpetual danger of violation. These false conclu-
sions, says Kant, are the result of false premises : you assume
that all knowledge comes from “separate and distinct”
sensations; naturally these cannot give you necessity, or in-

1 Wallace, p. 100.

2 A word about what to read. Kant himself is hardly intelligible to the be-
ginner, because his thought is insulated with a bizarre and intricate terminol-
ogy (hence the paucity of direct quotation in this chapter). Perhaps the sim-
plest introduction is Wallace’s Kant, in the Blackwood Philosophical Classics.
Heavier and more advanced is Paulsen’s Immanuel Kant . Chamberlain’s Im-
manuel Kant (2 vols.; New York, 1914) is interesting but erratic and digres-
sive. A good criticism of Kant may be found in Schopenhauer’s World
Will and Idea; vol. ii, pp. 1-159. But caveat emptor .

THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY

variable sequences of which you may be forever certain; and
naturally you must not expect to “see” your soul, even with
the eyes of the internal sense. Let us grant that absolute
certainty of knowledge is impossible if all knowledge comes
from sensation, from an independent external world which
owes us no promise of regularity of behavior. But what if
we have knowledge that is independent of sense-experience,
knowledge whose truth is certain to us even before experience
— a priori? Then absolute truth, and absolute science, would
become possible, would it not? Is there such absolute knowl-
edge? This is the problem of the first Critique. “My ques-
tion is, what we can hope to achieve with reason, when all
the material and assistance of experience are taken away.” 1
The Critique becomes a detailed biology of thought, an ex-
amination of the Origin and evolution of concepts, an analysis
of the inherited structure of the mind. This, as Kant beT
lieves, is the entire problem of metaphysics. “In this book
I have chiefly aimed at completeness ; and I venture to main-
tain that there ought not to be one single metaphysical prob-
lem that has not been solved here, or to the solution of which
the key at least has not here been supplied.” 2 * Exegi monu -
menturn aere perermius! With such egotism nature spurs us
on to creation.

The Critique comes to the point at once. “Experience is
by no means the only field to which our understanding can be
confined. Experience tells us what is, but not that it must
be necessarily what it is and not otherwise. It therefore never
gives us any really general truths; and our reason, which is
particularly anxious for that class of knowledge, is roused by
it rather than satisfied. General truths, which at the same
time bear the character of an inward necessity, must be inde-
pendent of experience, — clear and certain in themselves .” 8
That is to say, they must be true no matter what our later ex-

i Critique of Pure Benson, pref. p. xxiv.

* Ibid p. xxiii.

*Ibid. % p. 1.

KANT AND GERMAN IDEALISM

291

perience may be ; true even before experience ; true a priori.
“How far we can advance independently of all experience, in
a priori knowledge, is shown by the brilliant example of math-
ematics.” 1 Mathematical knowledge is necessary and cer-
tain; we cannot conceive of future experience violating it.
We may believe that the sun will “rise” in the west to-morrow,
or that some day, in some conceivable asbestos world, fire will
not burn stick; but we cannot for the life of us believe that
two times two will ever make anything else than four. Such
truths are true before experience; they do not depend on ex-
perience past, present, or to come. Therefore they are ab-
solute and necessary truths; it is inconceivable that they
should ever become untrue. But whence do we get this char-
acter of absoluteness and necessity? Not from experience;
for experience gives us nothing but separate sensations and
events, which may alter their sequence in the future. 2 These
truths derive their necessary character from the inherent
structure of our minds, from the natural and inevitable man-
ner in which our minds must operate. For the mind of man
(and here at last is the great thesis of Kant) is not passive
wax upon which experience and sensation write their absolute
and yet whimsical will ; nor is it a mere abstract name for the
series or group of mental states; it is an active organ which
moulds and coordinates sensations into ideas, an organ which
transforms the chaotic multiplicity of experience into the or-
dered unity of thought.

But how?

1. Transcendental Esthetic

The effort to answer this question, to study the inherent
structure of the mind, or the innate laws of thought, is what
Kant calls “transcendental philosophy,” because it is a prob-

J P. 4.

2 “Radical empiricism” (James, Dewey, etc.) enters the controversy at this
point, and argues, against both Hume and Kant, that experience gives us re-
lations and sequences as well as sensations and events.

m THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY

lem transcending sense-experience. “I call knowledge tran-
scendental which is occupied not so much with objects, as with
our a priori concepts of objects.” 1 — with our modes of cor-
relating our experience into knowledge. There are two
grades or stages in this process of working up the raw material
of sensation into the finished product of thought. The first
stage is the coordination of sensations by applying to them
the forms of perception — space and time; the second stage is
the coordination of the perceptions so developed, by applying
to them the forms of conception — the “categories” of thought.
Kant, using the word esthetic in its original and etymological
sense, as connoting sensation or feeling, calls the study of
the first of these stages “Transcendental Esthetic” ; and using
the word logic as meaning the science of the forms of thought,
be calls the study of the second stage “Transcendental Logic.”
These are terrible words, which will take meaning as the argu-
ment proceeds; once over this hill, the road to Kant will be
comparatively clear.

Now just what is meant by sensations and perceptions? —
and how does the mind change the former into the latter? By
itself a sensation is merely the awareness of a stimulus ; we have
a taste on the tongue, an odor in the nostrils, a sound in the
ears, a temperature on the skin, a flash of light on the retina,
a pressure on the fingers : it is the raw crude beginning of ex-
perience; it is what the infant has in the early days of its
groping mental life; it is not yet knowledge. But let these
various sensations group themselves about an object in space
and time — say this apple ; let the odor in the nostrils, and the
taste on the tongue, the light on the retina, the shape-revealing
pressure on the fingers and the hand, unite and group them-
selves about this “thing” : and there is now an awareness not
so much of a stimulus as of a specific object; there is a per-
ception. Sensation has passed into knowledge.

But again, was this passage, this grouping, automatic?

T Critique of Pwre Reason, p. 10.

KANT AND GERMAN IDEALISM

298

Did the sensations of themselves, spontaneously and naturally,
fall into a cluster and an order, and so become perception?
Yes, said Locke and Hume ; not at all, says Kant.

For these varied sensations come to us through varied chan-
nels of sense, through a thousand “afferent nerves” that pass
from skin and eye and ear and tongue into the brain ; what a
medley of messengers they must be as they crowd into the
chambers of the mind, calling for attention! No wonder
Plato spoke of “the rabble of the senses.” And left to them-
selves, they remain rabble, a chaotic “manifold,” pitifully im--
potent, waiting to be ordered into meaning and purpose and
power. As readily might the messages brought to a general
from a thousand sectors of the battle-line weave themselves
unaided into comprehension and command. No ; there is a
law-giver for this mob, a directing and coordinating power
that does not merely receive, but takes these atoms of sensa-
tion and moulds them into sense.

Observe, first, that not all of the messages are accepted.
Myriad forces play upon your body at this moment; a storm
of stimuli beats down upon the nerve-endings which, amoeba-
like, you put forth to experience the external world : but not
all that call are chosen ; only those sensations are selected that
can be moulded into perceptions suited to your present pur-
pose, or that bring those imperious messages of danger which
are always relevant. The clock is ticking, and you do not hear
it ; but that same ticking, not louder than before, will be heard
at once if your purpose wills it so. The mother asleep at
her infant’s cradle is deaf to the turmoil of life about her. - ;
but let the little one move, and the mother gropes her way back
to waking attention like a diver rising hurriedly to the sur-
face of the sea. Let the purpose be addition, and the stimulus
“two and three” brings the response, “five”; let the purpose
be multiplication, and the same stimulus, the same auditory
sensations, “two and three,” bring the response, “six.” As-
sociation of sensations or ideas is not merely by contiguity in

THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY

294

space or time, nor by similarity, nor by recency, frequency or
intensity of experience ; it is above all determined by the pur-
pose of the mind. Sensations and thoughts are servants, they
await our call, they do not come unless we need them. There
is an agent of selection and direction that uses them and is
their master. In addition to the sensations and the ideas there
is the mind.

This agent of selection and coordination, Kant thinks, uses
first of all two simple methods for the classification of the
material presented to it: the sense of space, and the sense of
time. As the general arranges the messages brought him ac-
cording to the place for which they come, and the time at
which they were written, and so finds an order and a system
for them all; so the mind allocates its sensations in space and
time, attributes them to this object here or that object there,
to this present time or to that past. Space and time are not
things perceived, but modes of perception, ways of putting
sense into sensation ; space and time are organs of perception.

They are a priori, because all ordered experience involves
and presupposes them. Without them, sensations could never
grow into perceptions. They are a priori because it is incon-
ceivable that we should ever have any future experience that
will not also involve them. And because they are a priori,
their laws, which are the laws of mathematics, are a priori, ab-
solute and necessary, world without end. It is not merely
probable, it is certain that we shall never find a straight line
that is not the shortest distance between two points. Mathe-
matics, at least, is saved from the dissolvent scepticism of
David Hume.

Can all the sciences be similarly saved? Yes, if their basic
principle, the law of causality — that a given cause must al-
ways be followed by a given effect — can be shown, like space
and time, to be so inherent in all the processes of understand-
ing that no future experience can be conceived that would
violate or escape it. Is causality, too, a priori, an indispens-
lble prerequisite and condition of all thought?

KANT AND GERMAN IDEALISM

295

2. Transcendental Analytic

So we pass from the wide field of sensation and perception
to the dark and narrow chamber of thought; from “tran-
scendental esthetic” to “transcendental logic.” And first to
the naming and analysis of those elements in our thought
which are not so much given to the mind by perception as
given to perception by the mind; those levers which raise the
“perceptual” knowledge of objects into the “conceptual”
knowledge of relationships, sequences, and laws ; those tools
of the mind which refine experience into science. Just as
perceptions arranged sensations around objects in space and
time, so conception arranges perceptions (objects and events)
about the ideas of cause, unity, reciprocal relation, necessity,
contingency, etc. ; these and other “categories” are the struc-
ture into which perceptions are received, and by which they
are classified and moulded into the ordered concepts of
thought. These are the very essence and character of the
mind; mind is the coordination of experience.

And here again observe the activity of this mind that was,
to Locke and Hume, mere “passive wax” under the blows of
sense-experience. Consider a system of thought like Aris-
totle’s; is it conceivable that this almost cosmic ordering of
data should have come by the automatic, anarchistic sponta-
neity of the data themselves? See this magnificent card-
catalogue in the library, intelligently ordered into sequence
by human purpose. Then picture all these card-cases thrown
upon the floor, all these cards scattered pell-mell into riotous
disorder. Can you now conceive these scattered cards pull-
ing themselves up, Munchausen-like, from their disarray, pass-
ing quietly into their alphabetical and topical places in their
proper boxes, and each box into its fit place in the rack, — until
all should be order and sense and purpose again? What a
miracle-story these sceptics have given us after all !

Sensation is unorganized stimulus, perception is organized
sensation, conception is organized perception, science is or-

296

THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY

ganized knowledge, wisdom is organized life : each is a greater
degree of order, and sequence, and unity. Whence this
order, this sequence, this unity? Not from the things them-
selves; for they are known to us only by sensations that
eome through a thousand channels at once in disorderly
multitude ; it is our purpose that put order and sequence and
unity upon this importunate lawlessness; it is ourselves, our
personalities, our minds, that bring light upon these seas.
Locke was wrong when he said, “There is nothing in the in-
tellect except what was first in the senses” ; Leibnitz was right
when he added, — “nothing, except the intellect itself.” “Per-
ceptions without conceptions,” says Kant, “are blind.” If
perceptions wove themselves automatically into ordered
thought, if mind were not an active effort hammering out or-
der from chaos, how could the same experience leave one man
mediocre, and in a more active and tireless soul be raised to
the light of wisdom and the beautiful logic of truth?

The world, then, has order, not of itself, but because the
thought that knows the world is itself an ordering, the first
stage in that classification of experience which at last is sci-
ence and philosophy. The laws of thought are also the laws-
of things, for things are known to us only through this
thought that must obey these laws, since it and they are one ;
in effect, as Hegel was to say, the laws of logic and the laws
of nature are one, and logic and metaphysics merge. The
generalized principles of science are necessary because they are
ultimately laws of thought that are involved and presupposed
in every experience, past, present, and to come. Science is
absolute, and truth is everlasting.

3. Transcendental Dialectic

Nevertheless, this certainty, this absoluteness, of the high-
est generalizations of logic and science, is, paradoxically,
limited and relative: limited strictly to the field of actual ex-
perience, and relative strictly to our human mode of experi-

KANT AND GERMAN IDEALISM 897

ence. For if our analysis has been correct, the world as we
know it is a construction, a finished product, almost— -one
might say — a manufactured article, to which the mind con-
tributes as much by its moulding forms as the thing contrib-
utes by its stimuli. (So we perceive the top of the table as
round, whereas our sensation is of an ellipse.) The object as
it appears to us is a phenomenon, an appearance, perhaps very
different from the external object before it came within the
ken of our senses ; what that original object was we can never
know; the “thing-in-itself” may be an object of thought or
inference (a “noumenon”) , but it cannot be experienced, — for
in being experienced it would be changed by its passage
through sense and thought. “It remains completely unknown
to us what objects may be by themselves and apart from the
receptivity of our senses. We know nothing but our manner
of perceiving them; that manner being peculiar to us, and
not necessarily shared by every being, though, no doubt, by
every human being.” 1 The moon as known to us is merely
a bundle of sensations (as Hume saw), unified (as Hume did
not see) by our native mental structure through the elabora-
tion of sensations into perceptions, and of these into concep-
tions or ideas ; in result, the moon is for us merely our ideas. 2

Not that Kant ever doubts the existence of “matter” and
the external world ; but he adds that we know nothing certain
about them except that they exist. Our detailed knowledge
is about their appearance, their phenomena, about the sen-
sations which we have of them. Idealism does not mean, as
the man in the street thinks, that nothing exists outside the
perceiving subject; but that a goodly part of every object is
created by the forms of perception and understanding: we
know the object as transformed into idea; what it is before
being so transformed we cannot know. Science, after all, is
naive ; it supposes that it is dealing with things in themselves,

1 Critique , p. 37. If Kant had not added the last clause, his argument for
the necessity of knowledge would have fallen.

2 So John Stuart Mill, with all his English tendency to realism, was driven
at last to define matter as merely “a permanent possibility of sensations”

298

THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY

in their i'ull-blooded external and uncorrupted reality ; philos«
ophy is a little more sophisticated, and realizes that the whole
material of science consists of sensations, perceptions and con-
ceptions, rather than of things. “Kant’s greatest merit,”
says Schopenhauer, “is the distinction of the phenomenon from
the thing-in-itself.” 1

It follows that any attempt, by either science or religion,
to say just what the ultimate reality is, must fall back into
mere hypothesis ; “the understanding can never go beyond the
limits of sensibility.” 2 Such transcendental science loses it-
self in “antinomies,” and such transcendental theology loses
itself in “paralogisms.” It is the cruel function of “tran-
scendental dialectic” to examine the validity of these attempts
of reason to escape from the enclosing circle of sensation and
appearance into the unknowable world of things “in them-
selves.”

Antinomies are the insoluble dilemmas born of a science that
tries to overleap experience. So, for example, when knowl-
edge attempts to decide whether the world is finite or infinite
in space, thought rebels against either supposition: beyond
any limit, we are driven to conceive something further, end-
lessly; and yet infinity is itself inconceivable. Again: did the
world have a beginning in time? We cannot conceive eter-
nity ; but then, too, we cannot conceive any point in the past
without feeling at once that before that, something was. Or
has that chain of causes which science studies, a beginning, a
First Cause? Yes, for an endless chain is inconceivable; no,
for a first cause uncaused is inconceivable as well. Is there
any exit from these blind alleys of thought? There is, says
Kant, if we remember that space, time and cause are modes
of perception and conception, which must enter into all our
experience, since they are the web and structure of experience ;
these dilemmas arise from supposing that space, time and
cause are external things independent of perception. We

1 The World as Will and Idea ; voL ii, p. 7,

2 Critique, p. 215.

KANT AND GERMAN IDEALISM

ahall never have any experience which we shall not interpret
in terms of space and time and cause ; but we shall never have
any philosophy if we forget that these are not things, but
modes of interpretation and understanding.

So with the paralogisms of “rational” theology-— which at-
tempts to prove by theoretical reason that the soul is an in-
corruptible substance, that the will is free and above the law
of cause and effect, and that there exists a “necessary being,”
God, as the presupposition of all reality. Transcendental
dialectic must remind theology that substance and cause and
necessity are finite categories, modes of arrangement and clas-
sification which the mind applies to sense-experience, and re-
liably valid only for the phenomena that appear to such ex-
perience; we cannot apply these conceptions to the noumenal
(or merely inferred and conjectural) world. Religion cannot
be proved by theoretical reason.

So the first Critique ends. One could well imagine David
Hume, uncannier Scot than Kant himself, viewing the results
with a sardonic smile. Here was a tremendous book, eight
hundred pages long; weighted beyond bearing, almost, with
ponderous terminology; proposing to solve all the problems
of metaphysics, and incidentally to save the absoluteness of
science and the essential truth of religion. What had the
book really done? It had destroyed the naive world of sci-
ence, and limited it, if not in degree, certainly in scope, —
and to a world confessedly of mere surface and appearance,
beyond which it could issue only in farcical “antinomies”; so
science was “saved” ! The most eloquent and incisive portions
of the book had argued that the objects of faith — a free and
immortal soul, a benevolent creator — could never be proved
by reason ; so religion was “saved” ! No wonder the priests of
Germany protested madly against this salvation, and re-
venged themselves by calling their dogs Immanuel Kant . 1

And no wonder that Heine compared the little professor of

i Wallace, p 82.

300

THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY

Konigsberg with the terrible Robespierre; the latter had
merely killed a king, and a few thousand Frenchmem— which
a German might forgive; but Kant, said Heine, had killed
God, had undermined the most precious arguments of theol-
ogy. “What a sharp contrast between the outer life of this
man, and his destructive, world-convulsing thoughts! Had
the citizens of Konigsberg surmised the whole significance of
those thoughts, they would have felt a more profound awe in
the presence of this man than in that of an executioner, who
merely slays human beings. But the good people saw in him
nothing but a professor of philosophy ; and when at the fixed
hour he sauntered by, they nodded a friendly greeting, and
set their watches.” 1

Was this caricature, or revelation?

IV. THE CRITIQUE OP PRACTICAL REASON

If religion cannot be based on science and theology, on what
then? On morals. The basis in theology is too insecure;
better that it should be abandoned, even destroyed ; faith must
be put beyond the reach or realm of reason. But therefore
the moral basis of religion must be absolute, not derived from
questionable sense-experience or precarious inference ; not cor-
rupted by the admixture of fallible reason ; it must be derived
from the inner self by direct perception and intuition. We
must find a universal and necessary ethic ; a priori principles
of morals as absolute and certain as mathematics. We must
show that “pure reason can be practical; i. e., can of itself
determine the will independently of anything empirical,” a
that the moral sense is innate, and not derived from experience.
The moral imperative which we need as the basis of religion
must be an absolute, a categorical, imperative.

Now the most astounding reality in all our experience is
precisely our moral sense, our inescapable feeling, in the face

1 Heine, Prose Miscellanies , Philadelphia, 1876; p. 146.

2 Critique of Practical Reason, p. 31.

KANT AND GERMAN IDEALISM

SOI

of temptation, that this or that is wrong. We may yield ; but
the feeling is there nevertheless. Le matin je fais des pro jets,
et le soir je fais des sottises; 1 but we know that they are sot-
tises, and we resolve again. What is it that brings the bite
of remorse, and the new resolution? It is the categorical im-
perative in us, the unconditional command of our conscience,
to “act as if the maxim of our action were to become by our
will a universal law of nature.” 2 We know, not by reason-
ing, but by vivid and immediate feeling, that we must avoid
behavior which, if adopted by all men, would render social
life impossible. Do I wish to escape from a predicament by
a lie? But “while I can will the lie, I can by no means will
that lying should be a universal law. For with such a law
there would be no promises at all.” 3 Hence the sense in me,
that I must not lie, even if it be to my advantage. Prudence
Is hypothetical; its motto is, Honesty when it is the best pol-
icy; but the moral law in our hearts is unconditional and ab-
solute.

And an action is good not because it has good results, or
because it is wise, but because it is done in obedience to this
inner sense of duty, this moral law that does not . come from
our personal experience, but legislates imperiously and h
priori for all our behavior, past, present, and future. The
only thing unqualifiedly good in this world is a good will —
the will to follow the moral law, regardless of profit or loss
for ourselves. Never mind your happiness; do your duty.
“Morality is not properly the doctrine how we may make our-
selves happy, but how we may make ourselves worthy of hap-
piness.” 4 Let us seek the happiness in others ; but for our-
selves, perfection — whether it bring us happiness or pain. 5
To achieve perfection in yourself and happiness in others,
“so act as to treat humanity, whether in thine own person

1 “In the morning I make good resolutions ; in the evening I commit follies.'*

2 Practical Reason, p. 139.

a Ibid., p. 19.

4 Ibid., p. 227.

2 Preface to The Metaphysical Elements of Ethics .

302

THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY

or in that of another, in every case as an end, never only as
a means”: 1 — this too, as we directly feel, is part of the cate-
gorical imperative. Let us live up to such a principle, and
we shall soon create an ideal community of rational beings;
to create it we need only act as if we already belonged to
it; we must apply the perfect law in the imperfect state. It
is a hard ethic, you say,— this placing of duty above beauty,
of morality above happiness; but only so can we cease to be
beasts, and begin to be gods.

Notice, meanwhile, that this absolute command to duty
proves at last the freedom of our wills ; how could we ever have
conceived such a notion as duty if we had not felt ourselves
free? We cannot prove this freedom by theoretical reason;
we prove it by feeling it directly in the crisis of moral choice.
We feel this freedom as the very essence of our inner selves, of
the “pure Ego” ; we feel within ourselves the spontaneous ac-
tivity of a mind moulding experience and choosing goals.
Our actions, once we initiate them, seem to follow fixed and in-
variable laws, but only because we perceive their results
through sense, which clothes all that it transmits in the dress
of that causal law which our minds themselves have made.
Nevertheless, we are beyond and above the laws we make in
order to understand the world of our experience ; each of us
is a center of initiative force and creative power. In a way
which we feel but cannot prove, each of us is free.

And again, though we cannot prove, we feel, that we are
deathless. We perceive that life is not like those dramas so
beloved by the people — -in which every villain is punished, and
every act of virtue meets with its reward; we learn anew every
day that the wisdom of the serpent fares better here than the
gentleness of the dove, and that any thief can triumph if he
steals enough. If mere worldly utility and expediency were
the justification of virtue, it would not be wise to be too good.
And yet, knowing all this, having it flung into our faces with
brutal repetition, we still feel the command to righteousness.

l Metaphysics of Morals , London, 1909; p. 47.

KANT AND GERMAN IDEALISM

we Tcnow that we ought to do the inexpedient good. How
could this sense of right survive if it were not that in our
hearts we feel this life to be only a part of life, this earthly
dream only an embryonic prelude to a new birth, a new awak-
ening ; if we did not vaguely know that in that later and longer
life the balance will be redressed, and not one cup of water
given generously but shall be returned a hundred-fold?

Finally, and by the same token, there is a God. If the
sense of duty involves and justifies belief in rewards to come,
“the postulate of immortality . . . must lead to the supposi-
tion of the existence of a cause adequate to this effect; in
other words, it must postulate the existence of God.” 1 This
again is no proof by “reason”; the moral sense, which has to
do with the world of our actions, must have priority over that
theoretical logic which was developed only to deal with sense-
phenomena. Our reason leaves us free to believe that behind
the thing-in-itself there is a just God; our moral sense com-
mands us to believe it. Rousseau was right: above the logic of
the head is the feeling in the heart. Pascal was right: the
heart has reasons of its own, which the head can never under-
stand.

V. ON RELIGION AND REASON

Does this appear trite, and timid, and conservative? But
it was not so ; on the contrary, this bold denial of “rational”
theology, this frank reduction of religion to moral faith and
hope, aroused all the orthodox of Germany to protests. To
face this “forty-parson-power” (as Byron would have called
it) required more courage than one usually associates with
the name of Kant.

That he was brave enough appeared in all clarity when he
published, at sixty-six, his Critique of Judgment, and, at
sixty-nine, his Religion within the Limits of Pure Reason. In
the earlier of these books Kant returns to the discussion of
that argument from design which, in the first Critique, he had

i Practical Reason , p. 220.

THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY

$04

rejected as an insufficient proof of the existence of God. He
begins by correlating design and beauty; the beautiful he
thinks, is anything which reveals symmetry and unity of struc-
ture, as if it had been designed by intelligence. He observes
in passing (and Schopenhauer here helped himself to a good
deal of his theory of art) that the contemplation of symmet-
rical design always gives us a disinterested pleasure ; and that
“an interest in the beauty of nature for its own sake is always
a sign of goodness.” 1 Many objects in nature show such
beauty, such symmetry and unity, as almost to drive us to the
notion of supernatural design. But on the other hand, says
Rant, there are also in nature many instances of waste and
chaos, of useless repetition and multiplication; nature pre-
serves life, but at the cost of how much suffering and death f
The appearance of external design, then, is not a conclusive
prool' of Providence. The theologians who use the idea so
much should abandon it, and the scientists who have aban-
doned it should use it ; it is a magnificent clue, and leads to
hundreds of revelations.. For there is design, undoubtedly;
but it is internal design, the design of the parts by the whole;
and if science will interpret the parts of an organism in terms
of their meaning for the whole, it will have an admirable
balance for that other heuristic principle — the mechanical con-
ception of life — which also is fruitful for discovery, but which,
alone, can never explain the growth of even a blade of grass.

The essay on religion is a remarkable production for a man
of sixty-nine ; it is perhaps the boldest of all the books of Rant.
Since religion must be based not on the logic of theoretical
reason but on the practical reason of the moral sense, it fol-
lows that any Bible or revelation must be judged by its value
for morality, and cannot itself be the judge of a moral code.
Churches and dogmas have value only in so far as they as-
sist the moral development of the race. When mere creeds
or ceremonies usurp priority over moral excellence as a test
of religion, religion has disappeared. The real church is a
i Critique of Judgment, sect. 29.

KANT AND GERMAN IDEALISM 805

community of people, however scattered and divided, who are
united by devotion to the common moral law. It was to estab-
lish such a community that Christ lived and died ; it was this
real church which he held up in contrast to the ecclesiasticism
of the Pharisees. But another ecclesiasticism has almost over-
whelmed this noble conception. “Christ has brought the
kingdom of God nearer to earth; but he has been misunder-
stood; and in place of God’s kingdom the kingdom of the
priest has been established among us.” 1 Creed and ritual
have again replaced the good life; and instead of men being
bound together by religion, they are divided into a thousand
sects; and all manner of “pious nonsense” is inculcated as “a
sort of heavenly court service by means of which one may
win through flattery the favor of the ruler of heaven.” 2 —
Again, miracles cannot prove a religion, for we can never
quite rely on the testimony which supports them; and prayer
is useless if it aims at a suspension of the natural laws that
hold for all experience. Finally, the nadir of perversion is
reached when the church becomes an instrument in the hands
of a reactionary government ; when the clergy, whose function
it is to console and guide a harassed humanity with religious
faith and hope and charity, are made the tools of theological
obscurantism and political oppression.

The audacity of these conclusions lay in the fact that pre-
cisely this had happened in Prussia. Frederick the Great had
died in 1786, and had been succeeded by Frederick William
II, to whom the liberal policies of his predecessor seemed to
smack unpatriotically of the French Enlightenment. Zedlitz,
who had been Minister of Education under Frederick, was dis-
missed ; and his place was given to a Pietist, Wollner. Woll-
ner had been described by Frederick as “a treacherous and
intriguing priest,” who divided his time between alchemy and
Rosicrucian mysteries, and climbed to power by offering him-
self as “an unworthy instrument” to the new monarch’s policy

1 Quoted in Chamberlain, Immanuel Kant ; vol. i, p, 510.

2 In Paulsen* 366.

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of restoring the orthodox' faith by compulsion* 1 In 1788
Wollner issued a decree which forbade any teaching, in school
or university, that deviated from the orthodox form of Lu-
theran Protestantism ; he established a strict censorship over all
forms of publication, and ordered the discharge of every teacher
suspected of any heresy. Kant was at first left unmolested,
because he was an old man, and — as one royal adviser said — •
only a few people read him, and these did not understand him.
But the essay on religion was intelligible ; and though it
rang true with religious fervor, it revealed too strong a strain
of Voltaire to pass the new censorship. The Berliner Monats-
schrift, which had planned to publish the essay, was ordered
to suppress it.

Kant acted now with a vigor and courage hardly credible
in a man who had almost completed three score years and ten.
He sent the essay to some friends at Jena, and through them
had it published by the press of the university there. Jena
was outside of Prussia, under the jurisdiction of that same
liberal Duke of Weimar who was then caring for Goethe.
The result was that in 1794 Kant received an eloquent cabinet
order from the Prussian King, which read as follows: “Our
highest person has been greatly displeased to observe how you
misuse your philosophy to undermine and destroy many of
the most important and fundamental doctrines of the Holy
Scriptures and of Christianity. We demand of you immedi-
ately an exact account, and expect that in future you will
give no such cause of offense, but rather that, in accordance
with your duty, you will employ your talents and authority so
that our paternal purpose may be more and more attained.
If you continue to oppose this order you may expect unpleas-
ant consequences.” 2 Kant replied that every scholar should
have the right to form independent judgments on religious
matters, and to make his opinions known ; but that during the
reign of the present king he would preserve silence. Some

i Encyclopedia Britanmca, article “Frederick William II”

2 In Paulsen, p. 49.

KANT AND GERMAN IDEALISM

307

biographers who can be very brave by proxy, have condemned
him for this concession; but let us remember that Kant was
seventy, that he was frail in health, and not fit for a fight;
and that he had already spoken his message to the world.

VI. ON POLITICS AND ETERNAL PEACE

The Prussian government might have pardoned Kant’s the-
ology, had he not been guilty of political heresies as well.
Three years after the accession of Frederick William II, the
French Revolution had set all the thrones of Europe trem-
bling. At a time when most of the teachers in the Prussian,
universities had rushed to the support of legitimate mon-
archy, Kant, sixty-five years young, hailed the Revolution
with joy ; and with tears in his eyes said to his friends : “Now
I can say like Simeon, ‘Lord, let now Thy servant depart in
peace; for mine eyes have seen Thy salvation.’ ” 1

He had published, in 1784, a brief exposition of his political
theory under the title of “The Natural Principle of the Po-
litical Order considered in connection with the Idea of a Uni-
versal Cosmopolitical History.” Kant begins by recognizing,
in that strife of each against all which had so shocked Hobbes,
nature’s method of developing the hidden capacities of life;
struggle is the indispensable accompaniment of progress. If
men were entirely social, man would stagnate ; a certain alloy
of individualism and competition is required to make the hu-
man species survive and grow. “Without qualities of an un-
social kind . . . men might have led an Arcadian shepherd
life in complete harmony, contentment, and mutual love; but
in that case all their talents would have forever remained hid-
den in their germ.” (Kant, therefore, was no slavish follower
of Rousseau.) “Thanks be then to nature for this unsociable-
ness, for this envious jealousy and vanity, for this insatiable
desire for possession and for power. . . . Man wishes con-
cord; but nature knows better what is good for his species.

i Wallace, p. 40.

308

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and she wills discord, in order that man may be impelled to
a new exertion of his powers,, and to, the further development
of his natural capacities.”

The struggle for existence, then, is not altogether an evil.
Nevertheless, men soon perceive that it must be restricted
within certain limits, and regulated by rules, customs, and
laws; hence the origin and development of civil society. But
now “the same unsociableness which forced men into society
becomes again the cause of each commonwealth’s assuming the
attitude of uncontrolled freedom in its external relations,—
i. e., as one state in relation to other states ; and consequently,
any one state must expect from any other the same sort of
evils as formerly oppressed individuals and compelled them to
enter into a civil union regulated by law.” 1 It is time that
nations, like men, should emerge from the wild state of nature,
and contract to keep the peace. The whole meaning and
movement of history is the ever greater restriction of pug-
nacity and violence, the continuous enlargement of the area
of peace. “The history of the human race, viewed as a whole,
may be regarded as the realization of a hidden plan of nature
to bring about a political constitution, internally and exter-
nally perfect, as the only state in which all the capacities im-
planted by her in mankind can be fully developed.” 2 * If
there is no such progress, the labors of successive civilizations
are like those of Sisyphus, who again and again “up the high
hill heaved a huge round stone,” only to have it roll back as
it was almost at the top. History would be then nothing more
than an endless and circuitous folly; “and we might suppose,
like the Hindu, that the earth is a place for the expiation of
old and forgotten sins.” 8

The essay on “Eternal Peace” (published in 1795, when
Kant was seventy-one) is a noble development of this theme.
Kant knows how easy it is to laugh at the phrase; and under

1 Eternal Peace and Other Essays; Boston, 1914?; p. 14?.

2 Ibid., p. 19.

8P. 58.

KANT AND GERMAN IDEALISM

809

his title he writes: “These words were once put by a Dutch’
inn-keeper on his sign-board as a satirical inscription, over the
representation of a church-yard” cemetery . 1 Kant had be-
fore complained, as apparently every generation must, that
“our rulers have no money to spend on public education . . .
because all their resources are already placed to the account
of the next war.” 2 * The nations will not really be civilized
until all standing armies are abolished. (The audacity of this
proposal stands out when we remember that it was Prussia
itself which, under the father of Frederick the Great, had been
the first to establish conscription.) “Standing armies excite
states to outrival one another in the number of their armed
men, which has no limit. Through the expense occasioned
thereby, peace becomes in the long run more oppressive than a
short war; and standing armies are thus the cause of aggres-
sive wars undertaken in order to get rid of this burden .” 8
For in time of war the army would support itself on the coun-
try, by requisitioning, quartering, and pillaging; preferably
in the enemy’s territory, but if necessary, in one’s own land;
even this would be better than supporting it out of govern-
ment funds.

Much of this militarism, in Kant’s judgment, was due to
the expansion of Europe into America and Africa and Asia;
with the resultant quarrels of the thieves over their new booty.
“If we compare the barbarian instances of inhospitality . . .
with the inhuman behavior of the civilized, and especially the
commercial, states of our continent, the injustice practiced by
them even in their first contact with foreign lands and peo-
ples fills us with horror ; the mere visiting of such peoples be-
ing regarded by them as equivalent to a conquest. America,
the negro lands, the Spice Islands, the Cape of Good Hope,
etc., on being discovered, were treated as countries that be-
longed to nobody; for the aboriginal inhabitants were reck-

i P. 68.

«P. 21.

a P, 71.

810 THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY

oned as nothing. ... And all this has been done by nations
who make a great ado about their piety, and who, while drink-
ing up iniquity like water, would have themselves regarded as
the very elect of the orthodox faith.” 1 — The old fox of
Konigsberg was not silenced yet !

Kant attributed this imperialistic greed to the oligarchical
constitution of European states; the spoils went to a select
few, and remained substantial even after division. If de-
mocracy were established, and all shared in political power,
the spoils of international robbery would have to be so sub-
divided as to constitute a resistible temptation. Hence the
“first definitive article in the conditions of Eternal Peace” is
this: “The civil constitution of every state shall be repub-
lican, and war shall not be declared except by a plebiscite of
all the citizens.” 2 When those who must do the fighting have
the right to decide between war and peace, history will no
longer be written in blood. “On the other hand, in a consti-
tution where the subject is not a voting member of the state,
and which is therefore not republican, the resolution to go to
war is a matter of the smallest concern in the world. For
in this case the ruler, who, as such, is not a mere citizen, but
the owner of the state, need not in the least suffer personally
by war, nor has he to sacrifice his pleasures of the table or
the chase, or his pleasant palaces, court festivals, or the like.
He can, therefore, resolve for war from insignificant reasons,
as if it were but a hunting expedition ; and as regards its pro-
priety, he may leave the justification of it without concern to
the diplomatic corps, who are always too ready to give their
services for that purpose.” 3 How contemporary truth is !

The apparent victory of the Revolution over the armies of
reaction in 1795 led Kant to hope that republics would now
spring up throughout Europe, and that an international or-
der would arise based upon a democracy without slavery and

1 P. 68.

2 Pp. 76 - 77 .

&Ibid.

KANT AND GERMAN IDEALISM

311

without exploitation, and pledged to peace. After all, the
function of government is to help and develop the individual,
not to use and abuse him. “Every man is to be respected as
an absolute end in himself ; and it is a crime against the dig-
nity that belongs to him as a human being, to use him as a
mere means for some external purpose.” 1 This too is part
and parcel of that categorical imperative without which religion
is a hypocritical farce. Kant therefore calls for equality : not
of ability, but of opportunity for the development and ap-
plication of ability; he rejects all prerogatives of birth and
class, and traces all hereditary privilege to some violent con-
quest in the past. In the midst of obscurantism and reaction
and the union of all monarchical Europe to crush the Revolu-
tion, he takes his stand, despite his seventy years, for the new
order, for the establishment of democracy and liberty every-
where. Never had old age so bravely spoken with the voice
of youth.

But he was exhausted now ; he had run his race and fought
his fight. He withered slowly into a childlike senility that
came at last to be a harmless insanity : one by one his sensibil-
ities and his powers left him ; and in 1804, aged seventy-nine,
he died, quietly and naturally, like a leaf falling from a tree.

VH. CRITICISM AND ESTIMATE

And now how does this complex structure of logic, meta-
physics, psychology, ethics, and politics stand today, after
the philosophic storms of a century have beaten down upon
it? It is pleasant to answer that much of the great edifice
remains ; and that the “critical philosophy” represents an event
of permanent importance in the history of thought. But
many details and outworks of the structure have been shaken.

First, then, is space a mere “form of sensibility,” having no
objective reality independent of the perceiving mind? Yes
and no. Yes: for space is an empty concept when not filled

i In Paulsen, p. 340.

THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY

S12

with perceived objects ; “space” merely means that certain ob-
jects are, for the perceiving mind, at such and such a position,
or distance, with reference to other perceived objects ; and no
external perception is possible except of objects in space;
space then is assuredly a “necessary form of the external
pense.” And no : for without doubt, such spatial facts as the
annual elliptical circuit of sun by earth, though statable only
by a mind, are independent of any perception whatever; the
deep and dark blue ocean rolled on before Byron told it to, and
after he had ceased to be. Nor is space a “construct” of the
mind through the coordination of spaceless sensations ; we per-
ceive space directly through our simultaneous perception of
different objects and various points — as when we see an in-
sect moving across a still background. Likewise: time as a
sense of before and after, or a measurement of motion, is of
course subjective, and highly relative; but a tree will age,
wither and decay whether or not the lapse of time is measured
or perceived. The truth is that Kant was too anxious to
prove the subjectivity of space, as a refuge from materialism;
he feared the argument that if space is objective and universal,
God must exist in space, and be therefore spatial and material.
He might have been content with the critical idealism which
shows that all reality is known to us primarily as our sensa-
tions and ideas. The old fox bit off more than he could chew . 1

He might well have contented himself, too, with the rela-
tivity of scientific truth, without straining towards that mi-
rage, the absolute. Recent studies like those of Pearson in
England, Mach in Germany, and Henri Poincare in France,
agree rather with Hume than with Kant: all science, even

i The persistent vitality of Kant’s theory of knowledge appears in its com*
plete acceptance by so matter-of-fact a scientist as the late Charles P. Stein*
metz: “All our sense-perceptions are limited by, and attached to, tho
conceptions of time and space. Kant, the greatest and most critical of all
philosophers, denies that time and space are the product of experience, but
shows them to be categories— conceptions in which our minds clothe the sense
perceptions. Modern physics has come to the same conclusion in the relativity
theory, that absolute space and absolute time have no existence, but time and
space exist only as far as things or events fill them; that is, they are form*
of perception.” — Address at the Unitarian Church, Schenectady, 1923.

KANT AND GERMAN IDEALISM 318

the most rigorous mathematics, is relative in its truth. Sci-
ence itself is not worried about the matter; a high degree of
probability contents it. Perhaps, after all, “necessary”
knowledge is not necessary?

The great achievement of Kant is to have shown, once for
all, that the external world is known to us only as sensation ;
and that the mind is no mere helpless tabula rasa, the inactive
victim of sensation, but a positive agent, selecting and recon-
structing experience as experience arrives. We can make
subtractions from this accomplishment without injuring its
essential greatness. We may smile, with Schopenhauer, at the
exact baker’s dozen of categories, so prettily boxed into trip-
lets, and then stretched and contracted and interpreted devi-
ously and ruthlessly to fit and surround all things. 1 And we
may even question whether these categories, or interpretive
forms of thought, are innate, existing before sensation and
experience ; perhaps so in the individual, as Spencer conceded,
though acquired by the race; and then, again, probably ac-
quired even by the individual: the categories may be grooves
of thought, habits of perception and conception, gradually
produced by sensations and perceptions automatically arrang-
ing themselves, — first in disorderly ways, then, by a kind of
natural selection of forms of arrangement, in orderly and
adaptive and illuminating ways. It is memory that classifies
and interprets sensations into perceptions, and perceptions
into ideas; but memory is an accretion. That unity of the
mind which Kant thinks native (the “transcendental unity of
apperception”) is acquired — and not by all; and can be lost
as well as won — in amnesia, or alternating personality, or
insanity. Concepts are an achievement, not a gift.

The nineteenth century dealt rather hardly with Kant’s
ethics, his theory of an innate, a priori, absolute moral sense.
The philosophy of evolution suggested irresistibly that the
sense of duty is a social deposit in the individual, the content
of conscience is acquired, though the vague disposition to so-

i Op, cit ,, vol. ii, p. 23.

314

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cial behavior is innate. The moral self, the social man, is
no “special creation” coming mysteriously from the hand of
God, but the late product of a leisurely evolution. Morals are
not absolute; they are a code of conduct more or less hap-
hazardly developed for group survival, and varying with the
nature and circumstances of the group: a people hemmed in
by enemies, for example, will consider as immoral that zestful
and restless individualism which a nation youthful and secure
in its wealth and isolation will condone as a necessary ingre-
dient in the exploitation of natural resources and the forma-
tion of national character. No action is good in itself, as
Kant supposes . 1

His pietistic youth, and his hard life of endless duty
and infrequent pleasure, gave him a moralistic bent; he
came at last to advocate duty for duty’s sake, and so fell
unwittingly into the arms of Prussian absolutism . 2 There is
something of a severe Scotch Calvinism in this opposition of
duty to happiness ; Kant continues Luther and the Stoic Ref-
ormation, as Voltaire continues Montaigne and the Epicurean
Renaissance. He represented a stem reaction against the
egoism and hedonism in which Helvetius and Holbach had
formulated the life of their reckless era, very much as Luther
had reacted against the luxury and laxity of Mediterranean
Italy. But after a century of reaction against the absolutism
of Kant’s ethics, we find ourselves again in a welter of urban
sensualism and immorality, of ruthless individualism untem-
pered with democratic conscience or aristocratic honor; and
perhaps the day will soon come when a disintegrating civiliza-
tion will welcome again the Kantian call to duty.

The marvel in Kant’s philosophy is his vigorous revival, in
the second Critique, of those religious ideas of God, freedom,
and immortality, which the first Critique had apparently de-
stroyed. “In Kant’s works,” says Nietzsche’s critical friendf
Paul Ree, “you feel as though you were at a country fair.

i Practical Reason , p. 31.

2Gf. Prof. Dewey: German Philosophy and Politics.

KANT AND GERMAN IDEALISM 315

You can buy from Him anything you want— freedom of the
will and captivity of the will, idealism and a refutation of
idealism* atheism and the good Lord. Like a juggler out of
an empty hat, Kant draws out of the concept of duty a God,
immortality, and freedom, — to the great surprise of his read-
ers.” 1 Schopenhauer too takes a fling at the derivation of
immortality from the need of reward: “Kant’s virtue, which at
first bore itself so bravely towards happiness, loses its inde-
pendence later, arid holds out its hand for a tip.” 2 The great
pessimist believes that Kant was really a sceptic who, having
abandoned belief himself, hesitated to destroy the faith of the
people, for fear of the consequences to public morals. “Kant
discloses the groundlessness of speculative theology, and leaves
popular theology untouched, nay even establishes it in a nobler
form as a faith based upon moral feeling.” This was after-
wards distorted by the philosophasters into rational apprehen-
sion and consciousness of God, etc. . . .; while Kant, as he
demolished old and revered errors, and knew the danger of
doing so, rather wished through the moral theology merely to
substitute a few weak temporary supports, so that the ruin
might not fall upon him, but that he might have time to es-
cape.” 3 So too Heine, in what is no doubt an intentional
caricature, represents Kant, after having destroyed religion,
going out for a walk with his servant Lampe, and suddenly
perceiving that the old man’s eyes are filled with tears.
“Then Immanuel Kant has compassion, and shows that he is
not only a great philosopher, but also a good man; and half
kindly, half ironically, he speaks: Did Lampe must have a
God or else he cannot be happy, says the practical reason ; for
my part, the practical reason may, then, guarantee the exist-
ence of God.’ ” 4 If these interpretations were true we should
have to call the second Critique a Transcendental Anesthetic.

But these adventurous reconstructions of the inner Kant

1 In Untermann, Science and Revolution , Chicago, 1905 ; p. 81.

2 In Paulsen, p. 317.

» The World as Will and Idea , vol. ii, p. 129.

4 Quoted by Paulsen, p. 8.

316

THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY

need not be taken too seriously. The fervor of the essay on
“Religion within the Limits of Pure Reason” indicates a sin-
cerity too intense to be questioned, and the attempt to change
the base of religion from theology to morals, from creeds to
conduct, could have come only from a profoundly religious
mind. “It is indeed true,” he wrote to Moses Mendelssohn
in 1766, “that I think many things with the clearest con-
viction,' ... which I never have the courage to say ; but I
will never say anything which I do not think.” 1 Naturally,
a long and obscure treatise like the great Critique lends itself
to rival interpretations; one of the first reviews of the hook,
written by Reinhold a few years after it appeared, said
as much as we can say today: “The Critique of Pure
Reason has been proclaimed by the dogmatists as the attempt
of a sceptic who undermines the certainty of all knowledge ;
— by the sceptics as a piece of arrogant presumption that
undertakes to erect a new form of dogmatism upon the
ruins of previous systems; — by the supernaturalists as a
subtly plotted artifice to displace the historical foundations
of religion, and to establish naturalism without polemic; — by
the naturalists as a new prop for the dying philosophy of
faith; — -by the materialists as an idealistic contradiction of
the reality of matter; — by the spiritualists as an unjustifiable
limitation of all reality to the corporeal world, concealed under
the name of the domain of experience.” 2 In truth the
glory of the book lay in its appreciation of all these points
of view; and to an intelligence as keen as Kant’s own, it might
well appear that he had really reconciled them all, and fused
them into such a unity of complex truth as philosophy had not
seen in all its history before.

As to his influence, the entire philosophic thought of the
nineteenth century revolved about his speculations. After
Kant, all Germany began to talk metaphysics: Schiller and
Goethe studied him; Beethoven quoted with admiration his

i In Paulsen, p. 53.

KANT AND GERMAN IDEALISM 817

famous words about the two wonders of life — “the starry
heavens above, the moral law within”; and Fichte, Schelling,
Hegel and Schopenhauer produced in rapid succession great
systems of thought reared upon the idealism of the old
Konigsberg sage. It was in these balmy days of German
metaphysics that Jean Paul Richter wrote: “God has given
to the French the land, to the English the sea, to the Germans
the empire of the air.” Kant’s criticism of reason, and his
exaltation of feeling, prepared for the voluntarism of Schopen-
hauer and Nietzsche, the intuitionism of Bergson, and the
pragmatism of William James; his identification of the laws
. of thought with the laws of reality gave to Hegel a whole
system of philosophy; and his unknowable “thing-in-itself”
influenced Spencer more than Spencer knew. Much of the
obscurity of Carlyle is traceable to his attempt to allegorize
the already obscure thought of Goethe and Kant — that diverse
religions and philosophies are but the changing garments of
one eternal truth. Caird and Green and Wallace and Watson
and Bradley and many others in England owe their inspira-
tion to the first Critique; and even the wildly innovating
Nietzsche takes his epistemology from the “great Chinaman
of Konigsberg” whose static ethics he so excitedly condemns.
After a century of struggle between the idealism of Kant,
variously reformed, and the materialism of the Enlightenment,
variously redressed, the victory seems to lie with Kant. Even
the great materialist Helvetius wrote, paradoxically: “Men,
if I may dare say it, are the creators of matter.” 1 Philoso-
phy will never again be so naive as in her earlier and simpler
days ; she must always be different hereafter, and profounder,
because Kant lived.

vm. A NOTE ON HEGEL

Not very long ago it was the custom for historians of phi-
losophy to give to the immediate successors of Kant — to

i In Chamberlain, vol. i, p. 86.

318

THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY

Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel — as much honor and space as
to all his predecessors in modern thought from Bacon and
Descartes to Voltaire and Hume. Our perspective today is a
little different, and we enjoy perhaps too keenly the invective
leveled by Schopenhauer at his successful rivals in the com-
petition for professional posts. By reading Kant, said
Schopenhauer, “the public was compelled to see that what is ob-
scure is not always without significance.” Fichte and Schell-
ing took advantage of this, and excogitated magnificent,
spider-webs of metaphysics. “But the height of audacity in
serving up pure nonsense, in stringing together senseless and
extravagant mazes of words, such as had previously been
known only in madhouses, was finally reached in Hegel, and
became the instrument of the most bare-faced general mystifi-
cation that has ever taken place, with a result which will ap-
pear fabulous to posterity, and will remain as a monument
to German stupidity.” 1 Is this fair?

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel was born at Stuttgart in
1770. His father was a subordinate official in the depart-
ment of finances of the state of Wiirtemherg; and Hegel him-
self grew up with the patient and methodical habits of those
civil servants whose modest efficiency has given Germany the
best-governed cities in the world. The youth was a tireless
student: he made full analyses of all the important books he
read, and copied out long passages. True culture, he said,
must begin with resolute self-effacement; as in the Pythag-
orean system of education, where the pupil, for the first five
years, was required to keep his peace.

His studies of Greek literature gave him an enthusiasm for
Attic culture which remained with him when almost all other
enthusiasms had died away. “At the name of Greece,” he
wrote, “the cultivated German finds himself at home. Eu-
ropeans have their religion from a further source, from the
East; . . . but what is here, what is present,— science and

iCaird, Hegel , in the Blackwood Philosophical Classics; pp. 5-8. The bio-
graphical account follows Caird throughout.

HEGEL

319

art, all that makes life satisfying, and elevates and adorns it
— we derive, directly or indirectly, from Greece.” For a time
he preferred the religion of the Greeks to Christianity; and
he anticipated Strauss and Renan by writing a Life of Jesus
in which Jesus was taken as the son of Mary and Joseph, and
the miraculous element was ignored. Later he destroyed the
book.

In politics too he showed a spirit of rebellion hardly to be
suspected from his later sanctification of the status quo.
While studying for the ministry at Tubingen, he and
Schelling hotly defended the French Revolution, and went
out early one morning to plant a Liberty Tree in the market-
place. “The French nation, by the bath of its revolution,”
he wrote, “has been freed from many institutions which the
spirit of man has left behind like its baby shoes, and which
therefore weighed upon it, as they still weigh upon others,
like lifeless feathers.” It was in those hopeful days, “when
to be young was very heaven,” that he flirted, like Fichte, with
a kind of aristocratic socialism, and gave himself, with charac-
teristic vigor, to the Romantic current in which all Europe
was engulfed.

He was graduated from Tubingen in 1793 with a certificate
stating that he was a man of good parts and character, well
up in theology and philology, but with no ability in philoso-
phy. He was poor now, and had to earn his bread by tutor-
ing in Berne and Frankfort. These were his chrysalis years:
while Europe tore itself into nationalist pieces, Hegel
gathered himself together and grew. Then (1799) his father
died, and Hegel, falling heir to some $1500, considered him-
self a rich man, and gave up tutoring. He wrote to his friend
Schelling for advice as to where to settle, and asked for a
place where there would be simple food, abundant books,
and “ein gutes Bier.” Schelling recommended Jena, which
Was a university town under the jurisdiction of the Duke of
Weimar. At Jena Schiller was teaching history; Tieck,
Novalis and the Schlegels were preaching romanticism; and

320

THE STORY OE PHILOSOPHY

Fichte and Schelling were propounding their philosophies.
There Hegel arrived in 1801, and in 1803 became a teacher at
the University.

He was still there in 1806 when Napoleon’s victory over
the Prussians threw the scholarly little city into confusion and
terror. French soldiers invaded Hegel’s home, and he took
to his heels like a philosopher, carrying with him the manu-
script of his first important book, The Phenomenology of
Spirit. For a while he was so destitute that Goethe told
Ehebel to lend him a few dollars to tide him over. Hegel
wrote almost bitterly to Knebel: “I have made my guiding-
star the Biblical saying, the truth of which I have learned by
experience, Seek ye first food and clothing, and the kingdom
of heaven shall be added unto you.” For a while he edited a
paper at Bamberg; then, in 1812, he became head of the
gymnasium at Numburg. It was there, perhaps, that the
stoic necessities of administrative work cooled the fires of
romanticism in him, and made him, like Napoleon and Goethe;
a classic vestige in a romantic age. And it was there that
he wrote his Logic (1812-16), which captivated Germany by
its unintelligibility, and won bim the chair of philosophy at
Heidelberg. At Heidelberg he wrote his immense Encyclo-
pedia of the Philosophical Sciences (1817), on the strength
of which he was promoted, in 1818, to the University of Berlin.
From that time to the end of his life he ruled the philosophic
world as indisputably as Goethe the world of literature, and
Beethoven the realm of music. His birthday came on the
day after Goethe’s ; and proud Germany made a double holiday
for them every year.

A Frenchman once asked Hegel to put his philosophy into
one sentence ; and he did not succeed so well as the monk who,
asked to define Christianity while standing on one foot, said,
simply, “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.” Hegel
preferred to answer in ten volumes; and when they were
written and published, and all the world was talking about
them, he complained that “only one man understands me.

HEGEL

321

and even he does not.” 1 Most of his writings, like Aristotle’s,
consist of his lecture-notes; or, worse, of the notes taken by
students who heard his lectures. Only the Logic and the
Phenomenology are from his hand, and these are masterpieces
of obscurity, darkened by abstractness and condensation of
style, by a weirdly original terminology, and by an over-
careful modification of every statement with a Gothic wealth
of limiting clauses. Hegel described his work as “an attempt
to teach philosophy to speak in German.” 2 He succeeded.

The Logic is an analysis not of methods of reasoning, but of
the concepts used in reasoning. These Hegel takes to be the
categories named by Kant — Being, Quality, Quantity, Rela-
tion, etc. It is the first business of philosophy to dissect these
basic notions that are so bandied about in all our thinking.
The most pervasive of them all is Relation ; every idea is a
group of relations ; we can think of something only by relat-
ing it to something else, and perceiving its similarities and
its differences. An idea without relations of any kind is
empty; this is all that is meant by saying that “Pure Being
and Nothing are the same” : Being absolutely devoid of rela-
tions or qualities does not exist, and has no meaning whatever.
This proposition led to an endless progeny of witticisms which
still breed ; and it proved to be at once an obstacle and a
lure to the study of Hegel’s thought.

Of all relations, the most universal is that of contrast or
opposition. Every condition of thought or of things — every
idea and every situation in the world— leads irresistibly to its
opposite, and then unites with it to form a higher or more
complex whole. This “dialectical movement” runs through
everything that Hegel wrote. It is an old thought, of course,
foreshadowed by Empedocles, and embodied in the “golden
mean” of Aristotle, who, wrote that “the knowledge of op-
posites is one.” The truth (like an electron) is an organic

1 Ruthless critics, as we might have expected, challenge the authenticity of
this story.

2 Wallace: Prolegomena to the Logic of Hegel, p. 16.

THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY

322

unity of opposed parts. The truth of conservatism end
radicalism is liberalism — an open mind and a cautious hand*
an open hand and a cautious mind; the formation of our
opinions on large issues is a decreasing oscillation between
extremes ; and in all debatable questions veritas in medio stat.
The movement of evolution is a continuous development of
oppositions, and their merging and reconciliation. Schelling
was right — there is an underlying “identity of opposites”;
and Fichte was right — thesis, antithesis and synthesis con-
stitute the formula and secret of all development and all
reality.

For not only do thoughts develop and evolve according to
this “dialectical movement,” but things do equally ; every con-
dition of affairs contains a contradiction which evolution must
resolve by a reconciling unity. So, no doubt, our present
social system secretes a self-corroding contradiction: the
stimulating individualism required in a period of economic
adolescence and unexploited resources, arouses, in a later
age, the aspiration for a cooperative commonwealth; and the
future will see neither the present reality nor the visioned
ideal, but a synthesis in which something of both will come
together to beget a higher life. And that higher stage too
will divide into a productive contradiction, and rise to still
loftier levels of organization, complexity, and unity. The
movement of thought, then, is the same as the movement of
things; in each there is a dialectical progression from unity
through diversity to diversity-in-unity. Thought and being
follow the same law ; and logic and metaphysics are one.

Mind is the indispensable organ for the perception of this
dialectical process, and this unity in difference. The function
of the mind, and the task of philosophy, is to discover the
unity that lies potential in diversity; the task of ethics is
to unify character and conduct; and the task of politics is
to unify individuals into a state. The task of religion is to
reach and feel that Absolute in which all opposites are resolved
into unity, that great sum of being in which matter and mind.

HEGEL

32$

subject and object, good and evil* are one. God is the system
of relationships in which all things move and have their being
and their significance. In man the Absolute rises to self-
consciousness, and becomes the Absolute Idea — that is,
thought realizing itself as part of the Absolute, transcending
individual limitations and purposes, and catching, underneath
the universal strife, the hidden harmony of all things*
“Reason is the substance of the universe; . . . the design of
the world is absolutely rational.” 1

Not that strife and evil are mere negative imaginings ; they
are real enough ; but they are, in wisdom’s perspective, stages
to fulfilment and the good. Struggle is the law of growth;
character is built in the storm and stress of the world; and a
man reaches his full height only through compulsions, respon-
sibilities, and suffering. Even pain has its rationale; it is
a sign of life and a stimulus to reconstruction. Passion also
has a place in the reason of things : “nothing great in the world
has been accomplished without passion ” ; 2 and even the
egoistic ambitions of a Napoleon contribute unwittingly to
the development of nations. Life is not made for happi-
ness, but for achievement. “The history of the world is not
the theatre of happiness; periods of happiness are blank
pages in it, for they are periods of harmony ” ; 3 and this dull
content is unworthy of a man. History is made only in those
periods in which the contradictions of reality are being
resolved by growth, as the hesitations and awkwardness of
youth pass into the ease and order of maturity. History is a
dialectical movement, almost a series of revolutions, in which
people after people, and genius after genius, becomes the
instrument of the Absolute. Great men are not so much
begetters, as midwives, of the future ; what they bring forth
is mothered by the Zeitgeist , the Spirit of the Age. The
genius merely places another stone on the pile, as others have

1 Hegel: Philosophy of History , Bohn ed., pp. 9, IS.

2 Ibid., p. 2t .

« Ibid., p. 2 r ' ,

324 THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY

done; “somehow his has the good fortune to come last, and
when he places his stone the arch stands self-supported.”
“Such individuals had no consciousness of the general Idea
they were unfolding; . . . but they had an insight into the
requirements of the time — what was ripe for development.
This was the very Truth for their age, for their world; the
species next in order, so to speak, and which was already
formed in the womb of time.” 1

Such a philosophy of history seems to lead to revolutionary
conclusions. The dialectical process makes change the car-
dinal principle of life; no condition is permanent; in every
stage of things there is a contradiction which only the “strife
of opposites” can resolve. The deepest law of politics, there-
fore, is freedom — an open avenue to change ; history is the
growth of freedom, and the state is, or should be, freedom
organized. On the other hand, the doctrine that “the real
is rational” has a conservative color: every condition, though
destined to disappear, has the divine right that belongs to
it as a necessary stage in evolution; in a sense it is brutally
true that “whatever is, is right.” And as unity is the goal of
development, order is the first requisite of liberty.

If Hegel inclined, in his later years, to the conservative
rather than to the radical implications of his philosophy, it
was partly because the Spirit of the Age (to use his own his-
toric phrase) was weary of too much change. After the
Revolution of 1830 he wrote: “Finally, after forty years of
war and immeasurable confusion, an old heart might rejoice
to see an end of it all, and the beginning of a period of peace-
ful satisfaction.” 2 It was not quite in order that the phi-
losopher of strife as the dialectic of growth should become the
advocate of content; but at sixty a man has a right to ask
for peace. Nevertheless, the contradictions in Hegel’s
thought were too deep for peace; and in the next generation
his followers split with dialectical fatality into the “Hegelian

ilbid., p. 31.

2 In Caird, p. 93.

HEGEL 325

Right” and the “Hegelian Left.” Weisse and the younger
Fichte found, in the theory of the real as rational, a phil-
osophical expression of the doctrine of Providence, and
justification for a politics of absolute obedience. Feuerbach,
Moleschott, Bauer and Marx returned to the scepticism and
“higher criticism” of Hegel’s youth, and developed the phi-
losophy of history into a theory of class struggles leading by
Hegelian necessity to “socialism inevitable.” In place of
the Absolute as determining history through the Zeitgeist,
Marx offered mass movements and economic forces as the
basic causes of every fundamental change, whether in the
world of things or in the life of thought. Hegel, the im-
perial professor, had hatched the socialistic eggs.

The old philosopher denounced the radicals as dreamers,
and carefully hid away his early essays. He allied himself
with the Prussian Government, blessed it as the latest expres-
sion of the Absolute, and basked in the sun of its academic
favors. His enemies called him “the official philosopher.”
He began to think of the Hegelian system as part of the
natural laws of the world; he forgot that his own dialectic
condemned his thought to impermanence and decay. “Never
did philosophy assume such a lofty tone, and never were its
royal honors so fully recognized and secured, as in 1830” in
Berlin. 1

But Hegel aged rapidly in those happy years. He be-
came as absent-minded as a story-book genius ; once he en-
tered the lecture-room with only one shoe, having left the
other, unnoticed, in the mud. When the cholera epidemic
came to Berlin in 1831, his weakened body was one of the first
to succumb to the contagion. After only a day’s illnpgg he
passed away suddenly and quietly in his sleep. Just as the
space of a year had seen the birth of Napoleon, Beethoven
and Hegel, so in the years from 1827 to 1832 Germany lost
Goethe, Hegel, and Beethoven. It was the end of an epoch,
the last fine effort of Germany’s greatest age.

1 Paulsen, Immanuel Kant, p. 385.

CHAPTER VH

SCHOPENHAUER

I. THE AGE

W HY did the first half of the nineteenth century lift
up, as voices of the age, a group of pessimistic poets
— Byron in England, De Musset in France, Heine in
Germany, Leopardi in Italy, Pushkin and Lermontof in
Russia; a group of pessimistic composers — Schubert, Schu-
mann, Chopin, and even the later Beethoven (a pessimist try-
ing to convince himself that he is an optimist) ; and above all,
a profoundly pessimistic philosopher — Arthur Schopenhauer?

That great anthology of woe, The World as Will and Idea ,
appeared in 1818. It was the age of the “Holy” Alliance.
Waterloo had been fought, the Revolution was dead, and the
“Son of the Revolution” was rotting on a rock in a distant
sea. Something of Schopenhauer’s apotheosis of Will was
due to that magnificent and bloody apparition of the Will
made flesh in the little Corsican ; and something of his despair
of life came from the pathetic distance of St. Helena — Will
defeated at last, and dark Death the only victor of all the
wars. The Bourbons were restored, the feudal barons were
returning to claim their lands, and the pacific idealism of
Alexander had unwittingly mothered a league for the suppres-
sion of progress everywhere. The great age was over. “I
thank God,” said Goethe, “that I am not young in so thor-
oughly finished a world.”

All Europe lay prostrate. Millions of strong men had
perished; millions of acres of land had been neglected or laid
waste ; everywhere on the Continent life had to begin again at
the bottom, to recover painfully and slowly the civilizing
economic surplus that had been swallowed up in war.

326

SCHOPENHAUER

m

Schopenhauer, traveling through France and Austria in 1804,
was struck by the chaos and uncleanliness of the villages, the
wretched poverty of the farmers, the unrest and misery of
the towns. The passage of the Napoleonic and counter-
Napoleonic armies had left scars of ravage on the face of
every country. Moscow was in ashes. In England, proud
victor in the strife, the farmers were ruined by the fall in the
price of wheat; and the industrial workers were tasting all
the horrors of the nascent and uncontrolled factory-system.
Demobilization added to unemployment. “I have heard my
father say,” wrote Carlyle, “that in the years when oatmeal
was as high as ten shillings a stone, he had noticed the laborers
retire each separately to a brook, and there drink instead of
dining, anxious only to hide their misery from one another.” 1
Never had life seemed so meaningless, or so mean.

Yes, the Revolution was dead; and with it the life seemed
to have gone out of the soul of Europe. That new heaven,
called Utopia, whose glamour had relieved the twilight of the
gods, had receded into a dim future where only young eyes
could see it; the older ones had followed that lure long
enough, and turned away from it now as a mockery of men’s
hopes. Only the young can live in the future, and only the
old can live in the past ; men were most of them forced to live
in the present, and the present was a ruin. How many thou-
sands of heroes and believers had fought for the Revolution!
How the hearts of youth everywhere in Europe had turned
towards the young republic, and had lived on the light and
hope of it, — until Beethoven tore into shreds the dedication
of his Heroic Symphony to the man who had ceased to be the
Son of the Revolution and had become the son-in-law of
reaction. How many had fought even then for the great
hope, and had believed, with passionate uncertainty, to the
very end? And now here was the very end: Waterloo, and
St. Helena, and Vienna ; and on the throne of prostrate France
a Bourbon who had learned nothing and forgotten nothing.

lFroude: Life and Letters of Thomas Carlyle, If d. 52

328 THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY

This was the glorious denouement of a generation of such
hope and effort as human history had never known befcre.
What a comedy this tragedy was — for those whose laughter
was yet bitter with tears !

Many of the poor had, in these days of disillusionment and
suffering, the consolation of religious hope; but a large pro-
portion of the upper classes had lost their faith, and looked
out upon a ruined world with no alleviating vision of a vaster
life in whose final justice and beauty these ugly ills would be
dissolved. And in truth it was hard enough to believe that
such a sorry planet as men saw in 1818 was held up in the
hand of an intelligent and benevolent God. Mephistopheles
had triumphed, and every Faust was in despair. Voltaire had
sown the whirlwind, and Schopenhauer was to reap the harvest.

Seldom had the problem of evil been flung so vividly and
insistently into the face of philosophy and religion. Every
martial grave from Boulogne to Moscow and the Pyramids
lifted a mute interrogation to the indifferent Stars. How
iong, O Lord, and Why? Was this almost universal calamity
the vengeance of a just God on the Age of Reason and un-
belief? Was it a call to the penitent intellect to bend before
the ancient virtues of faith, hope and charity? So Schlegel
thought, and Novalis, and Chateaubriand, and De Musset,
and Southey, and Wordsworth, and Gogol ; and they turned
back to the old faith like wasted prodigals happy to be home
again. But some others made harsher answer : that the chaos
of Europe but reflected the chaos of the universe ; that there
was no divine order after all, nor any heavenly hope; that
God, if God there was, was blind, and Evil brooded over the
face of the earth. So Byron, and Heine, and Lermontof, and
Leopardi, and our philosopher.

n. THE MAH

Schopenhauer was born at Dantzig on February 22, 1788.
His father was a merchant noted for ability, hot temper,

SCHOPENHAUER

independence of character, and love of liberty. He moved
from Dantzig to Hamburg when Arthur was five years old,
because Dantzig lost its freedom in the annexation of Poland
in 1793. Young Schopenhauer, therefore, grew up in the
midst of business and finance ; and though he soon abandoned
the mercantile career into which his father had pushed him,
it left its mark upon him in a certain bluntness of manner, a
realistic turn of mind, a knowledge of the world and of men;
it made him the antipodes of that closet or academic type of
philosopher whom he so despised. The father died, ap-
parently by his own hand, in 1805. The paternal grand-
mother had died insane.

“The character or will,” says Schopenhauer, “is inherited
from the father ; the intellect from the mother.” 1 The
mother had intellect — she became one of the most popular
novelists of her day — but she had temperament and temper
too. She had been unhappy with her prosaic husband; and
when he died she took to free love, and moved to Weimar as
the fittest climate for that sort of life. Arthur Schopenhauer
reacted to this as Hamlet to his mother’s re-marriage; and
his quarrels with his mother taught him a large part of
those half-truths about women with which he was to season
his philosophy. One of her letters to him reveals the state of
their affairs: “You are unbearable and burdensome, and
very hard to live with; all your good qualities are over-
shadowed by your conceit, and made useless to the world
simply because you cannot restrain your propensity to pick
holes in other people.” 2 So they arranged to live apart ; he
was to come only to her “at homes,” and be one guest among
others ; they could then be as polite to each other as strangers,
instead of hating each other like relatives. Goethe, who liked
Mme. Schopenhauer because she let him bring his Christiane
with him, made matters worse by telling the mother that her
son would become a very famous man ; the mother had never

1 The World as Will and Idea ; London, 1883 ; iil, 300.

* In Wallace: Life of Schopenhauer; London, no date; p. 59.

330 THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY

heard of two geniuses in the same family. Finally, in some
culminating quarrel, the mother pushed her son and rival down
the stairs; whereupon our philosopher bitterly informed her
that she would be known to posterity only through him.
Schopenhauer quitted Weimar soon afterward; and though
the mother lived twenty-four years more, he never saw her
again. Byron, also a child of 1788, seems to have had
similar luck with his mother. These men were almost by this
circumstance doomed to pessimism; a man who has not known
a mother’s love — and worse, has known a mother’s hatred —
has no cause to be infatuated with the world.

Meanwhile Schopenhauer had gone through “gymnasium”
and university, and had learned more than was on their
schedules. He had his fling at love and the world, with results
that affected his character and his philosophy. 1 He became
gloomy, cynical, and suspicious; he was obsessed with fears
and evil fancies ; he kept his pipes under lock and key, and
never trusted his neck to a barber’s razor; and he slept with
loaded pistols at his bedside — presumably for the convenience
of the burglar. He could not bear noise: “I have long
held the opinion,” he writes, “that the amount of noise which
anyone can bear undisturbed stands in inverse proportion to
his mental capacity, and may therefore be regarded as a pretty
fair measure of it. . . . Noise is a torture to all intellectual
people. . . . The superabundant display of vitality which
takes the form of knocking, hammering, and tumbling things
about, has proved a daily torment to me all my life long.” 2
He had an almost paranoiac sense of unrecognized greatness ;
missing success and fame, he turned within and gnawed at his
own soul.

He had no mother, no wife, no child, no family, no country.
“He was absolutely alone, with not a single friend ; and be-
tween one and none there lies an infinity.” 3 Even more than

*Cf. Wallace, 92.

2 The World as Will and Idea, ii, 199; Essays, “On Noise.”

8 Nietzsche: Schopenhauer as Educator; London, 1910; p. 122.

SCHOPENHAUER 881

Goethe he was immune to the nationalistic fevers of his age.
In 1813 he so far fell under the sway of Fichte’s enthusiasm
for a war of liberation against Napoleon, that he thought of
volunteering, and actually bought a set of arms. But pru-
dence seized him in time ; he argued that “Napoleon gave after
all only concentrated and untrammeled utterance to that self-
assertion and lust for more life which weaker mortals feel
but must perforce disguise.” 1 Instead of going to war he
went to the country and wrote a doctor’s thesis in philoso-
phy-

After this dissertation On the Fourfold Root of Sufficient
Reason (1813), 2 Schopenhauer gave all his time, and devoted
all his power, to the work which was to be his masterpiece — -
The World as Will and Idea. He sent the MS. to the pub-
lisher magna cum laude; here, he said, was no mere rehash of
old ideas, but a highly coherent structure of original thought-
“clearly intelligible, vigorous, and not without beauty”; a book
?f which would hereafter be the source and occasion of a hun-
dred other books.” 3 All of which was outrageously egotistic,
and absolutely true. Many years later Schopenhauer was so
sure of having solved the chief problems of philosophy that
he thought of having his signet ring carved with an image
of the Sphinx throwing herself down the abyss, as she had
promised to do on having her riddles answered.

Nevertheless, the book attracted hardly any attention; the
world was too poor and exhausted to read about its poverty and
exhaustion. Sixteen years after publication Schopenhauer
was informed that the greater part of the edition had been sold

* Wallace: Article “Schopenhauer* In the Encyclopedia Brittanica,

S Schopenhauer insists, hardly with sufficient reason, and almost to the point
of salesmanship, that this book must be read before the World as Will and
idea can be understood. The reader may nevertheless rest content with
knowing that the “principle of sufficient reason” is the “law of cause and ef-
fect,” in four forms: 1 — Logical, as the determination of conclusion by
premises; 2 — Physical, as the determination of effect by cause; 3 — Mathemat-
ical, as the determination of structure by the laws of mathematics and me-
chanics; and 4 — Moral, as the determination of conduct by character,
s In Wallace, TAfe , p. 107.

332 THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY

as waste paper. In his essay on Fame, in “The Wisdom of
Life,” he quotes, with evident allusion to his masterpiece, two
remarks of Lichtenberger’s : “Works like this are as a mirror :
if an ass looks in you camlot expect an angel to look out” ; and
“when a head and a book come into collision, and one sounds
hollow, is it always the book?” Schopenhauer goes on, with
the voice of wounded vanity : “The more a man belongs to pos-
terity — in other words, to humanity in general — so much the
more is he an alien to his contemporaries; for since his work is
not meant for them as such, but only in so far as they form part
of mankind at large, there is none of that familiar local color
about his productions which would appeal to them.” And then
he becomes as eloquent as the fox in the fable : “Would
a musician feel flattered by the loud applause of an audience
if he knew that they were nearly all deaf, and that to con-
ceal their infirmity he saw one or two persons applauding?
And what would he say if he discovered that those one or two
persons had often taken bribes to secure the loudest applause
for the poorest player?” — In some men egotism is a compensa-
tion for the absence of fame; in others, egotism lends a gener-
ous cooperation to its presence.

So completely did Schopenhauer put himself into this book
that his later works are but commentaries on it; he became
Talmudist to his own Torah, exegete to his own Jeremiads.
In 1836 he published an essay On the Will in Nature , which
was to some degree incorporated into the enlarged edition of
The World as Will and Idea which appeared in 18 4s4. In
1841 came The Two Ground-Problems of Ethics , and in 1851
two substantial volumes of Parerga et Paralipomena — liter-
ally, “By-products and Leavings” — which have been trans-
lated into English as the Essays. For this, the most readable
of his works, and replete with wisdom and wit, Schopenhauer
received, as his total remuneration, ten free copies. Optimism
is difficult under such circumstances.

Only one adventure disturbed the monotony of his studious

SCHOPENHAUER

seclusion after leaving Weimar. He had hoped for a chance
to present his philosophy at one of the great universities of
Germany ; the chance came in 1822, when he was invited to
Berlin as privat-docent. He deliberately chose for his lec-
tures the very hours at which the then mighty Hegel was
scheduled to teach; Schopenhauer trusted that the students
would view him and Hegel with the eyes of posterity. But the
students could not so far anticipate, and Schopenhauer found
himself talking to empty seats. He resigned, and revenged
himself by those bitter diatribes against Hegel which mar
the later editions of his chef-d’oeuvre. In 1831 a cholera epi-
demic broke out in Berlin ; both Hegel and Schopenhauer fled ;
but Hegel returned prematurely, caught the infection, and died
in a few days. Schopenhauer never stopped until he reached
Frankfort, where he spent the remainder of his seventy-two
years.

Like a sensible pessimist, he had avoided that pitfall of op-
timists — the attempt to make a living with the pen. He had
inherited an interest in his father’s firm, and lived in modest
comfort on the revenue which this brought him. He invested
his money with a wisdom unbecoming a philosopher. When
a company in which he had taken shares failed, and the other
creditors agreed to a 70% settlement, Schopenhauer fought for
full payment, and won. He had enough to engage two rooms
in a boarding-house ; there he lived the last thirty years of his
life, with no comrade but a dog. He called the little poodle
Atma (the Brahmins’ term for the World-Soul), but the wags
of the town called it “Young Schopenhauer.” He ate his din-
ners, usually, at the Englischer Hof. At the beginning of
each meal he would put a gold coin upon the table before him;
and at the end of each meal he would put the coin back into
his pocket. It was, no doubt, an indignant waiter who at last
asked him the meaning of this invariable ceremony. Schopen-
hauer answered that it was his silent wager to drop the coin
into the poor-box on the first day that the English officers din-

334 THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY

ing there should talk of anything else than horses, women, or
dogs. 1

The universities ignored him and his books, as if to sub-
stantiate his claim that all advances in philosophy are made
outside of academic walls. “Nothing,” says Nietzsche, “so
offended the German savants as Schopenhauer’s unlikeness to
them.” But he had learned some patience; he was confident
that, however belated, recognition would come. And at last,
slowly, it came. Men of the middle classes — lawyers, physi-
cians, merchants — found in him a philosopher who offered
them no mere pretentious jargon of metaphysical unrealities,
but an intelligible survey of the phenomena of actual life. A
Europe disillusioned with the ideals and efforts of 1848 turned
almost with acclamation to this philosophy that had voiced
the despair of 1815. The attack of science upon theology,
the socialist indictment of poverty and war, the biological
stress on the struggle for existence, — all these factors helped
to lift Schopenhauer finally to fame.

He was not too old to enjoy his popularity: he read with
avidity all the articles that appeared about him ; he asked his
friends to send him every bit of printed comment they could
find — he would pay the postage. In 1854 Wagner sent him
a copy of Der Ring der Nibelugen, with a word in apprecia-
tion of Schopenhauer’s philosophy of music. So the great
pessimist became almost an optimist in his old age ; he played
the flute assiduously after dinner, and thanked Time for rid-
ding him of the fires of youth. People came from all over the
world to see him; and on his seventieth birthday, in 1858,
congratulations poured in upon him from all quarters and
every continent.

It was not too soon ; he had but two more years to live. On
September 21, 1860, he sat down alone to breakfast, appar-
ently well. An hour later his landlady found him still seated
at the table, dead,
l Wallace, 171.

SCHOPENHAUER

m. THE WORLD AS IDEA

What strikes the reader at once upon opening The World
as Will and Idea is its style. Here is no Chinese puzzle of
Kantian terminology, no Hegelian obfuscation, no Spinozist
geometry ; everything is clarity and order ; and all is admirably
centered about the leading conception of the world as will,
and therefore strife, and therefore misery. What blunt
honesty, what refreshing vigor, what uncompromising direct-
ness! Where his predecessors are abstract to the point of
invisibility, with theories that give out few windows of illustra-
tion upon the actual world, Schopenhauer, like the son of a bus-
iness man, is rich in the concrete, in examples, in applications,
even in humor. 1 After Kant, humor in philosophy was a
startling innovation.

But why was the book rejected? Partly because it at-
tacked just those who could have given it publicity — the uni-
versity teachers. Hegel was philosophic dictator of Germany
in 1818; yet Schopenhauer loses no time in assailing him. In
the preface to the second edition he writes :

No time can be more unfavorable to philosophy than that
in which it is shamefully misused on the one hand to further
political objects, on the other as a means of livelihood. K • .

Is there then nothing to oppose to the maxim, Primvm
mvere, deinde philosophari? 2 These gentlemen desire to
live, and indeed to live by philosophy. To philosophy they
are assigned, with their wives and children. ... The rule,

“I sing the song of him whose bread I eat,” has always held

1 One instance of his humor had better be buried in the obscurity of a
foot-note. “The actor Unzelmaim,” notorious for adding remarks of his
own to the lines of the playwright, “was forbidden, at the Berlin theatre,
to improvise. Soon afterwards he had to appear upon the stage on horse-
back.” Just as they entered, the horse was guilty of conduct seriously
unbecoming a public stage. “The audience began to laugh; whereupon
Unzelmann severely reproached the horse. — ‘Do you not know that we are
forbidden to improvise ?’” — Vol. ii, p. 273.

2 First one must live, then one may philosophize.

336

THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY

good ; the making of money by philosophy was regarded by
the ancients as the characteristic of the sophists. . . . Noth-
ing is to be had for gold but mediocrity. ... It is impossible
that an age which for twenty years has applauded a Hegel —
that intellectual Caliban — as the greatest of the philoso-
phers, . . . could make him who has looked on at that
desirous of its approbation. . . . But rather, truth will al-
ways be paucorum hominum , 1 and must therefore quietly and
modestly wait for the few whose unusual mode of thought
may find it enjoyable. . . . Life is short, but truth works
far and lives long ; let us speak the truth.

These last words are nobly spoken ; but there is something
of sour grapes in it all ; no man was ever more anxious for ap-
probation than Schopenhauer. It would have been nobler
still to say nothing ill of Hegel; de vivis nil nisi bonum — of
the living let us say nothing but good. And as for mod-
estly awaiting recognition, — “I cannot see,” says Schopen-
hauer, “that between Kant and myself anything has been done
in philosophy.” 2 “I hold this thought — that the world is will
— to be that which has long been sought for under the name
of philosophy, and the discovery of which is therefore re-
garded, by those who are familiar with history, as quite as
impossible as the discovery of the philosopher’s stone.” 3 “I
only intend to impart a single thought. Yet, notwithstand-
ing all my endeavors, I could find no shorter way of imparting
it than this whole book. . . . Read the book twice, and the
first time with great patience .” 4 So much for modesty !
“What is modesty but hypocritical humility, by means of
which, in a world swelling with envy, a man seeks to obtain
pardon for excellences and merits from those who have
none?” 5 “No doubt, when modesty was made a virtue, it

1 Of few men.

2 Vol. ii, p. 5.

* VoL i, p. vii.

4 Ibid., viii. In fact, this is just what one must do; many have found even
a third reading fruitful. A great book is like a great symphony, which
must be heard many times before it can be really understood,
e I, 303.

SCHOPENHAUER 337

was a very advantageous thing for the fools; for everybody
is expected to speak of himself as if he were one.” 1

There was no humility about the first sentence of Schopen-
hauer’s book. “The world,” it begins, “is my idea.” When
Fichte had uttered a similar proposition even the metaphys-
ically sophisticated Germans had asked, — “What does his wife
say about this?” But Schopenhauer had no wife. His mean-
ing, of course, was simple enough: he wished to accept at the
outset the Kantian position that the external world is known
to us only through our sensations and ideas. There follows
an exposition of idealism which is clear and forceful enough,
but which constitutes the least original part of the book, and
might better have come last than first. The world took L
generation to discover Schopenhauer because he put his worst
foot forward, and hid his own thought behind a two-hundred-
page barrier of second-hand idealism. 2

The most vital part of the first section is an attack on ma-
terialism. How can we explain mind as matter, when we know
matter only through mind?

If we had followed materialism thus far with clear ideas,
when we reached its highest point we would suddenly be
seized with a fit of the inextinguishable laughter of the Olym-
pians. As if waking from a dream, we would all at once be-
come aware that its final result — knowledge — which it had
reached so laboriously, was presupposed as the indispensable
condition of its very starting-point. Mere matter ; and
when we imagined that we thought matter, we really thought
only the subject that perceives matter: the eye that sees it,

1 Essays, “On Pride.”

2 Instead of recommending books about Schopenhauer it would be better
to send the reader to Schopenhauer himself: all three volumes of his main
work (with the exception of Part I in each volume) are easy reading, and
full of matter; and all the Essays are valuable and delightful. By way
of biography Wallace’s Life should suffice. In this essay it has been thought
desirable to condense Schopenhauer’s immense volumes not by rephrasing
their ideas, but by selecting and coordinating the salient passages, and
leaving the thought in the philosopher’s own clear and brilliant language. The
reader will have the benefit of getting Schopenhauer at first hand, however
hrjeflv.

m THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY

the hand that feels it, the understanding that knows it.
Thus the tremendous petitio principii reveals itself unex-
pectedly ; for suddenly the last link is seen to be the starting-
point, the chain a circle; and the materialist is like Baron
Munchausen, who, when swimming on horseback, drew the
horse into the air with his legs, and himself by his queue. 1 . . .
The crude materialism which even now, in the middle of the
nineteenth century, 2 has been served up again under the ig-
norant delusion that it is original, . . . stupidly denies vital
force, and first of all tries to explain the phenomena of life
from physical and chemical forces, and those again from
the mechanical effects of matter. 3 . . . But I will never be-
lieve that even the simplest chemical combination will ever
admit of mechanical explanation; much less the properties
of light, heat, and electricity. These will always require a
dynamical explanation. 4

No: it is impossible to solve the metaphysical puzzle, to
discover the secret essence of reality, by examining matter
first, and then proceeding to examine thought : we must begin
with that which we know directly and intimately — ourselves.
“We can never arrive at the real nature of things from with-
out. However much we may investigate, we can never reach
anything but images and names. We are like a man who
goes round a castle seeking in vain for an entrance, and some-
times sketching the fafades.” 5 Let us enter within. If we
can ferret out the ultimate nature of our own minds we shall
perhaps have the key to the external world.

IV. THE WORLD AS WILL

1. The Will to Live

Almost without exception, philosophers have placed the es-
sence of mind in thought and consciousness; man was the
H, 34.

2 Vogt, Buchner, Moleschott, Feuerbach, etc.
s I, 159.

4 III, 43.

SCHOPENHAUER

339

knowing animal, the animal rationale . “This ancient and
universal radical error, this enormous proton pseudos , 1 . . •
must before everything be set aside.” 2 * “Consciousness is the
mere surface of our minds, of which, as of the earth, we do
iiot know the inside but only the crust.” 8 Under the con-
scious intellect is the conscious or unconscious mil, a striving,
persistent vital force, a spontaneous activity, a will of im-
perious desire. The intellect may seem at times to lead the
will, but only as a guide leads his master; the will “is the
strong blind man who carries on his shoulders the lame man
who can see.” 4 We do not want a thing because we have
found reasons for it, we find reasons for it because we want it ;
we even elaborate philosophies and theologies to cloak our
desires . 5 * Hence Schopenhauer calls man the “metaphysical
animal”: other animals desire without metaphysics. “Noth-
ing is more provoking, when we are arguing against a man
with reasons and explanations, and taking all pains to con®
vince him, than to discover at last that he will not understand,
that We have to do with his will." 6 Hence the uselessness of
logic: no one ever convinced anybody by logic; and even logi-
cians use logic only as a source of income. To convince a
man, you must appeal to his self-interest, his desires, his
will. Observe how long we remember our victories, and how
soon we forget our defeats; memory is the menial of will . 7
“In doing accounts we make mistakes much oftener in our
own favor than to our disadvantage; and this without the
slightest dishonest intention.” 8 “On the other hand, the un-
derstanding of the stupidest man becomes keen when objects

i First lie, initial mistake.

2 II, 409. Schopenhauer forgets (or does he take his lead from?) Spinoza’s
emphatic statement: “Desire is the very essence of man.”- — Ethics, part iv 0
$rop. 18. Fichte had also emphasized the will.

s II, 828.

4 II, 421.

c A source of Freud.

« III, 443.

* Essays, “Counsels and Maxims,” p. 12$.

*11, 433.

340

THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY

are in question that closely concern his wishes ” ; 1 in general,
the intellect is developed by danger, as in the fox, or by want,
as in the criminal. But always it seems subordinate and in-
strumental to desire ; when it attempts to displace the will, con-
fusion follows. No one is more liable to mistakes than he
who acts only on reflection . 2

Consider the agitated strife of men for food, mates, or chil-
dren; can this be the work of reflection? Certainly not; the
cause is the half conscious will to live, and to live fully. “Men
are only apparently drawn from in front ; in reality they are
pushed from behind ” ; 8 they think they are led on by what
they see, when in truth they are driven on by what they feel,
— by instincts of whose operation they are half the time un-
conscious. Intellect is merely the minister of foreign affairs ;
“nature has produced it for the service of the individual
will. Therefore it is only designed to know things so far as
they afford motives for the will, but not to fathom them or
to comprehend their true being.” 4 “The will is the only per-
manent and unchangeable element in the mind; ... it is the
will which,” through continuity of purpose, “gives unity to
consciousness and holds together all its ideas and thoughts, ac-
companying them like a continuous harmony.” 6 It is the
organ-point of thought.

Character lies in the will, and not in the intellect; charac-
ter too is continuity of purpose and attitude: and these are
will. Popular language is correct when it prefers the “heart”
to the “head”; it knows (because it has not reasoned about
it) that a “good will” is profounder and more reliable than a
clear mind; and when it calls a man “shrewd,” “knowing,” or
“cunning” it implies its suspicion and dislike. “Brilliant
qualities of mind win admiration, but never affection”; and
“all religions promise a reward . . . for excellences of the

i II, 437.

2 II, 251.

8 III, 118.

* II, 468, 826; a source of Bergson.

* 11 , 888 .

SCHOPENHAUER 341

will or heart, but none for excellences of the head or under-
standing.” 1

Even the body is the product of the will. The blood,
pushed on by that will which we vaguely call life, builds its
own vessels by wearing grooves in the body of the embryo ; the
grooves deepen and close up, and become arteries and veins. 2
The will to know builds the brain just as the will to grasp
forms the hand, or as the will to eat develops the digestive
tract. 3 Indeed, these pairs — these forms of will and these
forms of flesh — are but two sides of one process and reality.
The relation is best seen in emotion, where the feeling and
the internal bodily changes form one complex unit. 4

The act of will and the movement of the body are not two
different things objectively known, which the bond of causal-
ity unites; they do not stand in the relation of cause and
effect ; they are one and the same, but they are given in en-
tirely different ways, — immediately, and again in percep-
tion. . . . The action of the body is nothing but the act of
the will objectified. This is true of every movement of
the body; . . . the whole body is nothing but objectified
will. . . . The parts of the body must therefore completely
correspond to the principal desires through which the will
manifests itself ; they must be the visible expression of these
desires. Teeth, throat and bowels are objectified hunger;
the organs of generation are objectified sexual desire. . . .
The whole nervous system constitutes the antennae of the
will, which it stretches within and without. ... As the hu-
man body generally corresponds to the human will generally,
so the individual bodily structure corresponds to the indi-
vidually modified will, the character of the individual. 5

The intellect tires, the will never; the intellect needs sleep,
but the will works even in sleep. Fatigue, like pain, has its

HI, 450, 449.

2 II, 479.

9 II, 486. This is the Lamarckian view of growth and evolution as due
to desires and functions compelling structures and begetting organs.

4 1, 132. A source for the J ames-Lange theory of emotion?

5 1, 130-141 ; II, 482. Cf, Sninoza. Etliica, III, 2.

THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY

seat in the brain ; muscles not connected with the cerebrum (like
the heart) never tire . 1 In sleep the brain feeds ; but the will
requires no food. Hence the need for sleep is greatest in
brain-workers. (This fact, however, “must not mislead us
into extending sleep unduly ; for then it loses in intensity . . .
and becomes mere loss of time.”) 2 In sleep the life of man
sinks to the vegetative level, and then “the will works accord-
ing to its original and essential nature, undisturbed from with-
out, with no diminution of its power through the activity of
the brain and the exertion of knowing, which is the heaviest
organic function; . . . therefore in sleep the whole power of
the will is directed to the maintenance and improvement of the
organism. Hence all healing, all favorable crises, take place
in sleep.” 8 Burdach was right when he declared sleep to be
the original state. The embryo sleeps almost continuously,
and the infant most of the time. Life is “a struggle against
sleep : at first we win ground from it, which in the end it re-
covers. Sleep is a morsel of death borrowed to keep up and
renew that part of life which has been exhausted by the day.” 4
It is our eternal foe; even when we are awake it possesses us
partly. After all, what is to be expected of heads even the
wisest of which is every night the scene of the strangest and
the' most senseless dreams, and which has to take up its med-
itations again on awakening from them?” 5

Will, then, is the essence of man. Now what if it is also
the essence of life in all its forms, and even of “inanimate”
matter? What if will is the long-sought-for, the long-
despaired-of, “thing-in-itself,” — the ultimate inner reality and
secret essence of all things?

Let us try, then, to interpret the external world in terms of

ill, 424. But is there no such thing as the satiation or exhaustion of
desire? In profound fatigue or sickness even the will to live fades.

2 II, 468.

3 II, 468.

4 “Counsels and Maxims,” essay “On Our Relations to Ourselves.”

* II, 333.

SCHOPENHAUER

will. And let us go at once to the bottom ; where others have
said that will is a form of force let us say that force is a form
of will . 1 To Hume’s question — What is causality? — we shall
answer, Will. As will is the universal cause in ourselves, so is
it in things ; and unless we so understand cause as will, caus-
ality will remain only a magic and mystic formula, really
meaningless. Without this secret we are driven to mere occult
qualities like “force,” or “gravity,” or “affinity”; we do not
know what these forces are, but we know — at least a little
more clearly — what will is ; let us say, then, that repulsion and
attraction, combination and decomposition, magnetism and
electricity, gravity and crystallization, are Will . 2 Goethe ex-
pressed this idea in the title of one of his novels, when he called
the irresistible attraction of lovers die Wahlverwandschaften
— “elective affinities.” The force which draws the lover, and
the force which draws the planet, are one.

So in plant life. The lower we go among the forms of
life the smaller we find the role of intellect; but not so with
wfll.

That which in us pursues its ends by the light of knowl-
edge, but here . . . only strives blindly and dumbly in a
one-sided and unchangeable manner, must yet in both cases
come under the name of Will. . . . Unconsciousness is the
original and natural condition of all things, and therefore
also the basis from which, in particular species of beings,
consciousness results as their highest efflorescence; where-
fore even then unconsciousness always continues to pre-
dominate. Accordingly, most existences are without con-
sciousness ; but yet they act according to the laws of their
nature, — i. e., of their will. Plants have at most a very
weak analogue of consciousness; the lowest species of ani-
mals only the dawn of it. But even after it has ascended
through the whole series of animals to man and his reason,
the unconsciousness of plants, from which it started, still re-

H, 144.

2 1, 142.

@44 THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY

mains the foundation, and may be traced in the necessity fot

sleep. 1

Aristotle was right: there is a power within that moulds
every form, in plants and planets, in animals and men. “The
instinct of animals in general gives us the best illustration of
what remains of teleology in nature. For as instinct is an
action similar to that which is guided by the conception of
an end, and yet is entirely without this ; so all construction in
nature resembles that which is guided by the conception of an
end, and yet is entirely without it. 55 2 The marvelous me-
chanical skill of animals shows how prior the will is to the in-
tellect. An elephant which had been led through Europe, and
had crossed hundreds of bridges, refused to advance upon a
weak bridge, though it had seen many horses and men crossing
it. A young dog fears to jump down from the table ; it fore-
sees the effect of the fall not by reasoning (for it has no expe-
rience of such a fall) but by instinct. Orang-outangs warm
themselves by a fire which they find* but they do not feed the
fire; obviously, then, such actions are instinctive, and not the
result of reasoning ; they are the expression not of intellect but
of will. 3

The will, of course, is a will to live, and a will to maximum
life. How dear life is to all living things! — and with what
silent patience it will bide its time ! “For thousands of years
galvanism slumbered in copper and zinc, and they lay quietly
beside silver, which must be consumed in flame as soon as all
three are brought together under the required conditions.
Even in the organic kingdom we see a dry seed preserve the
slumbering force of life through three thousand years, and,
when at last the favorable circumstances occur, grow up as a
plant.” Living toads found in limestone lead to the conclu-
sion that even animal life is capable of suspension for thou-

H, 153; II, 418, 337.

2 I, 210.

8 I, 29.

SCHOPENHAUER 34$

sands of years. 1 The will is a will to live; and its eternal
enemy is death.

But perhaps it can defeat even death?

% The Will to Reproduce

It can, by the strategy and martyrdom of reproduction.
Every normal organism hastens, at maturity, to sacrifice it-
self to the task of reproduction : from the spider who is eaten
up by the female he has just fertilized, or the wasp that de-
votes itself to gathering food for offspring it will never see,
to the man who wears himself to ruin in the effort to feed
and clothe and educate his children. Reproduction is the ulti-
mate purpose of every organism, and its strongest instinct;
for only so can the will conquer death. And to ensure this
conquest of death, the will to reproduce is placed almost en-
tirely beyond control of knowledge or reflection : even a philos-
opher, occasionally, has children.

The will shows itself here as independent of knowledge,
and works blindly, as in unconscious nature. . . . Accord-
ingly, the reproductive organs are properly the focus of
will, and form the opposite pole to the brain, which is the
representative of knowledge. . . . The former are the life-
sustaining principle, — they ensure endless life ; “f or this rea-
son they were worshipped by the Greeks in the phallus and
by the Hindus in the Ivngam . . . . Hesiod and Parmenides
said very significantly that Eros is the first, the creator,
the principle from which all things proceed. The relation
of the sexes ... is really the invisible central point of all
action and conduct, and peeps out everywhere in spite of all
veils thrown over it. It is the cause of war and the end of
peace; the basis of what is serious, and the aim of the jest;
the inexhaustible source of wit, the key of all allusions, and
the meaning of all mysterious hints. 2 . . . We see it at

H,178.

2 A source of Freud’s theory of “wit and the unconscious.”

THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY

m

every moment seat itself, as the true and hereditary lord of
the world, out of the fullness of its own strength, upon the
ancestral throne; and looking down thence with scornful
glance, laugh at the preparations made to bind it, or im-
prison it, or at least limit it and, wherever possible, keep it
concealed, and even so to master it that it shall only appear
as a subordinate, secondary concern of life . 1

The “metaphysics of love” revolves about this subordination
of the father to the mother, of the parent to the child, of the
individual to the species. And first, the law of sexual attrac-
tion is that the choice of mate is to a large extent determined,
however unconsciously, by mutual fitness to procreate.

Each seeks a mate that will neutralize his defects, lest they
be inherited; ... a physically weak man will seek a strong
woman. . . . Each one will especially regard as beautiful in
another individual those perfections which he himself lacks,
nay, even those imperfections which are the opposite of his
own . 2 . . . The physical qualities of two individuals can be
such that for the purpose of restoring as far as possible the
type of the species, the one is quite specially and perfectly
the completion and supplement of the other, which therefore
desires it exclusively. . , . The profound consciousness with
which we consider and ponder every part of the body, . . .
the critical scrupulosity with which we look at a woman who
begins to please us . . . the individual here acts, without
knowing it, by order of something higher than himself. . . .
Every individual loses attraction for the opposite sex in pro-
portion as he or she is removed from the fittest period for
begetting or conceiving : . . . youth without beauty has still
always attraction; beauty without youth has none. . . .
That in every case of falling in love, . . . what alone is

1 1, 426, 625 ; III, 314. Schopenhauer, like all who have suffered from sex,
exaggerates its r 61 e; the parental relation probably outweighs the sexual
in the minds of normal adults,
s A source of Weininger.

SCHOPENHAUER

looked to is the production of an individual of a definite
nature, is primarily confirmed by the fact that the essential
matter is not the reciprocation of love, but possession . 1

Nevertheless, no unions are so unhappy as these love mar*
riages — and precisely for the reason that their aim is the per-
petuation of the species, and not the pleasure of the individ-
ual . 2 “He who marries from love must live in sorrow,” runs
a Spanish proverb. Half the literature of the marriage prob-
lem is stultified because it thinks of marriage as mating, in-
stead of thinking of it as an arrangement for the preservation
of the race. Nature does not seem to care whether the parents
are “happy forever afterwards,” or only for a day, so long as
reproduction is achieved. Marriages of convenience, ar-
ranged by the parents of the mates, are often happier than
marriages of love. Yet the woman who marries for love,
against the advice of her parents, is in a sense to be admired ;
for “she has preferred what is of most importance, and has
acted in the spirit of nature (more exactly, of the species),
while the parents advised in the spirit of individual egoism.” 3
Love is the best eugenics.

Since love is a deception practiced by nature, marriage is
the attrition of love, and must be disillusioning. Only a
philosopher can be happy in marriage, and philosophers do not
marry.

Because the passion depended upon an illusion which rep-
resented that which has value only for the species as valu-
able for the individual, the deception must vanish after the
attainment of the end of the species. The individual dis-
covers that he has been the dupe of the species. If Pe-
trarch’s passion had been gratified, his song would have been
silenced . 4

1 III, 342, 357, 347, 360, 850, 352, 341.

2 III, 372.

8 111,871.

•till, 37ft

348

THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY

The subordination of the individual to the species as in-
strument of its continuance, appears again in the apparent
dependence of individual vitality on the condition of the re-
productive cells.

The sexual impulse is to be regarded as the inner life of
the tree (the species) upon which the life of the individual
grows, like a leaf that is nourished by the tree and assists in
nourishing the tree; this is why that impulse is so strong,
and springs from the depths of our nature. To castrate an
individual means to cut him off from the tree of the species
upon which he grows, and thus severed, leaves him to wither ;
hence the degradation of his mental and physical powers.
That the service of the species, i. e., fecundation, is fol-
lowed in the case of every animal individual by momentary
exhaustion and debility of all the powers, and in the case of
most insects, indeed, by speedy death, — on account of
which Celsus said, Seminis emissio est partis ammae jac -
tura; that in the case of man the extinction of the gen-
erative power shows that the individual approaches death;
that excessive use of this power at every age shortens life,
while on the other hand, temperance in this respect increases
all the powers, and especially the muscular powers, on which
account it was part of the training of the Greek athletes;
that the same restraint lengthens the life of the insect even
to the following spring; all this points to the fact that the
life of the individual is at bottom only borrowed from that of
the species. . . . Procreation is the highest point ; and after
attaining to it, the life of the first individual quickly or
slowly sinks, while a new life ensures to nature the endurance
of the species, and repeats the same phenomena. . . . Thus
the alternation of death and reproduction is as the pulse-
beat of the species. . . . Death is for the species what sleep
is for the individual ; . . . this is nature’s great doctrine of
immortality. . . . For the whole world, with all its phe-
nomena, is the objectivity of the one indivisible will, the Idea,
which is related to all other Ideas as harmony is related to
the single voice. ... In Eckermann’s Conversations with
Goethe (vol. i, p. 161), Goethe says: “Our spirit is a being

SCHOPENHAUER

of a nature quite indestructible, and its activity continues
from eternity to eternity. It is like the sun, which seems to
set only to our earthly eyes, but which, in reality, never sets,
but shines on unceasingly.” Goethe has taken the simile
from me, not I from him . 1

Only in space and time do we seem to be separate beings;
they constitute the “principle of individuation” which divides
life into distinct organisms as appearing in different places or
periods; space and time are the Veil of Maya, — Illusion hid-
ing the unity of things. In reality there is only the species,
only life, only will. “To understand clearly that the individ-
ual is only the phenomenon, not the thing-in-itself,” to see in
“the constant change of matter the fixed permanence of form,”
— this is the essence of philosophy . 3 “The motto of history
should run: Eadem , sed aliter ” 8 The more things change,
the more they remain the same.

He to whom men and all things have not at all times ap-
peared as mere phantoms or illusions, has no capacity for
philosophy. . . . The true philosophy of history lies in per-
ceiving that, in all the endless changes and motley com-
plexity of events, it is only the self-same unchangeable
being that is before us, which today pursues the same ends
as it did yesterday and ever will. The historical philoso-
pher has accordingly to recognize the identical character in
all events, . . . and in , spite of all the variety of special
circumstances, of costumes and manners and customs, has to
see everywhere the same humanity. . . . To have read
Herodotus is, from a philosophical point of view, to have
studied enough history. . . . Throughout and everywhere
the true symbol of nature is the circle, because it is the
schema or type of recurrence . 4

We like to believe that all history is a halting and imperfect
preparation for the magnificent era of which we are the salt

HII, 310; I, 214; III, 312, 270, 2fS7; I, 206, 362.

2 I, 357-8.

s III, 227. “The same things, but in different ways.”

4 III, 227, 267 ; Wallace, 97. Cf. Nietzsche’s “eternal recurrence ”

350

THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY

and summit; but this notion of progress is mere conceit and
folly. “In general, the wise in all ages have always said the
same things, and the fools, who at all times form the immense
majority, have in their way too acted alike, and done the
opposite; and so it will continue. For, as Voltaire says,
we shall leave the world as foolish and wicked as we found
it.” 1

In the light of all this we get a new and grimmer sense of
the inescapable reality of determinism. “Spinoza says (Epis-
tle 62) that if a stone which has been projected through the
air had consciousness, it would believe that it was moving of
its own free will. I add to this only that the stone would be
right. The impulse given it is for the stone what the motive
is for me ; and what in the stone appears as cohesion, gravita-
tion, rigidity, is in its inner nature the same as that which I
recognize in myself as will, and what the stone also, if knowl-
edge were given to it, would recognize as will.” 2 But in
neither the stone nor the philosopher is the will “free.” Will
as a whole is free, for there is no other will beside it that could
limit it; but each part of the universal Will — each species,
each organism, each organ — is irrevocably determined by the
whole.

Everyone believes himself h priori to be perfectly free,
even in his individual actions, and thinks that at every mo-
ment he can commence another manner of life, which just
means that he can become another person. But a posteriori,
through experience, he finds to his astonishment that he is
not free, but subjected to necessity; that in spite of all his
resolutions and reflections he does not change his conduct,
and that from the beginning of his life to the end of it, he
must carry out the very character which he himself con-
demns, and as it were, play the part which he hat’ under-
taken, to the very end. 8

* Introduction to “The Wisdom of Life.”

2 II, 164.
si, 147.

SCHOPENHAUER

351

V. THE WORLD AS EVIL

But if the world is will, it must be a world of suffering.
And first, because will itself indicates want, and its grasp is
always greater than its reach. For every wish that is satis-
fied there remain ten that are denied. Desire is infinite, ful-
filment is limited — “it is like the alms thrown to a beggar, that
keeps him alive today in order that his misery may be pro-
longed tomorrow. ... As long as our consciousness is filled
by our will, so long as we are given up to the throng of de-
sires with their constant hopes and fears, so long as we are
subject to willing, we can never have lasting happiness or
peace.” 1 And fulfilment never satisfies ; nothing is so fatal
to an ideal as its realization. “The satisfied passion oftener
leads to unhappiness than to happiness. For its demands
often conflict so much with the personal welfare of him who
is concerned that they undermine it.” 2 Each individual bears
within himself a disruptive contradiction; the realized desire
develops a new desire, and so on endlessly. “At bottom this
results from the fact that the will must live on itself, for there
exists nothing besides it, and it is a hungry will.” 8

In every individual the measure of the pain essential to
him was determined once for all by his nature; a measure
which could neither remain empty, nor be more than filled.
... If a great and pressing care is lifted from our breast,

. . . another immediately replaces it, the whole material of
which was already there before, but could not come into con-
sciousness as care because there was no capacity left for it.

. . . But now that there is room for this it comes forward
and occupies the throne . 4

Again, life is evil because pain is its basic stimulus and
reality, and pleasure is merely a negative cessation of pain.

1 I, 253.

2 III, 368.

8 I, 201.

41, 409.

352

THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY

Aristotle was right: the wise man seeks not pleasure, but
freedom from care and pain.

All satisfaction, or what is commonly called happiness, is,
in reality and essence, negative only. . . . We are not
properly conscious of the blessings and advantages we actu-
ally possess, nor do we prize them, but think of them merely
as a matter of course, for they gratify us only negatively,
by restraining suffering. Only when we have lost them d*
we become sensible of their value; for the want, the priva-
tion, the sorrow, is the positive thing, communicating itself
directly to us. . . . What was it that led the Cynics to re-
pudiate pleasure in any form, if it was not the fact that
pain is, in a greater or less degree, always bound up with
pleasure? . . . The same truth is contained in that fine
French proverb: le mieux est Vennemi du bien — leave well
enough alone . 1

Life is evil because “as soon as want and suffering permit
rest to a man, emmi is at once so near that he necessarily re-
quires diversion,” 2 — i. e., more suffering. Even if the social-*
ist Utopia were attained, innumerable evils would be left, be-
cause some of them — like strife — are essential to life; and if
every evil were removed, and strife were altogether ended, bore-
dom would become as intolerable as pain. So “life swings like
a pendulum backward and forward between pain and ennui.
. . . After man had transformed all pains and torments into
the conception of hell, there remained nothing for heaven ex-
cept ennui ” 3 The more successful we become, the more we
are bored. “ As want is the constant scourge of the people, so
ennui is the scourge of the fashionable world. In middle-class
life ennui is represented by the Sundays and want by the week-
days.” 4

Life is evil because the higher the organism the greater the
suffering. The growth of knowledge is no solution.

1 1, 411 ; “Counsels and Maxims,” p. 5. “The better is enemy of the good.*
2 I, 404.

8 I, 402.

4 1, 404.

SCHOPENHAUER

353

For as the phenomenon of will becomes more complete, the
suffering becomes more and more apparent. In the plant
there is as jet no sensibility, and therefore no pain. A cer-
tain very small degree of suffering is experienced by the
lowest species of animal life — Infusoria and Radiata ; even
in insects the capacity to feel and suffer is still limited. It
first appears in a high degree with the complete nervous
system of vertebrate animals, and always in a higher degree
the more intelligence develops. Thus, in proportion as
knowledge attains to distinctness, as consciousness ascends,
pain also increases, and reaches its highest degree in man.
And then, again, the more distinctly a man knows — the more
intelligent he is — the more pain he has ; the man who is gifted
with genius suffers most of all . 1

He that increaseth knowledge, therefore, increaseth sorrow.
Even memory and foresight add to human misery; for most
of our suffering lies in retrospect or anticipation ; pain itself
is brief. How much more suffering is caused by the thought
of death than by death itself!

Finally, and above all, life is evil because life is war. Ev-
erywhere in nature we see strife, competition, conflict, and a
•suicidal alternation of victory and defeat. Every species
“fights for the matter, space, and time of the others.”

The young hydra, which grows like a bud out of the old
one, and afterwards separates itself from it, fights, while it
is still joined to the old one, for the prey that offers itself,
so that the one snatches it out of the mouth of the other.
But the bull-dog ant of Australia affords us the most extra-
ordinary example of this kind; for if it is cut in two, a battle
begins between the head and the tail. The head seizes the
tail with its teeth, and the tail defends itself bravely by
stinging the head ; the battle may last for half an hour, un-
til they die or are dragged away by other ants. This con-
test takes place every time the experiment is tried. . . .
Yunghahn relates that he saw in Java a plain, as far as the
U, 400.

THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY

eye could reach, entirely covered with skeletons, and took it
for a battle-field ; they were, however, merely the skeletons of
large turtles, . . . which come this way out of the sea to lay
their eggs, and are then attacked by wild dogs who with their
united strength lay them on their backs, strip off the small
shell from the stomach, and devour them alive. But often
then a tiger pounces upon the dogs. ... For this these
turtles are born. . . . Thus the will to live everywhere
preys upon itself, and in different forms is its own nourish-
ment, till finally the human race, because it subdues all the
others, regards nature as a manufactory for its own use.
Yet even the human race . . . reveals in itself with most
terrible distinctness this conflict, this variance of the will
with itself ; and we find homo homini lupus . 1

The total picture of life is almost too painful for contem-
plation ; life depends on our not knowing it too well.

If we should bring clearly to a man’s sight the terrible
sufferings and miseries to which his life is constantly ex-
posed, he would be seized with horror; and if we were to
conduct the confirmed optimist through the hospitals, in-
firmaries, and surgical operating-rooms, through the prisons,
torture-chambers, and slave kennels, over battle-fields and
places of execution; if we were to open to him all the dark
abodes of misery, where it hides itself from the glance of cold
curiosity, and, finally, allow him to look into the starving
dungeons of Ugolino, he too would understand at last the
nature of this “best of all possible worlds.’* For whence did
Dante take the materials of his hell but from our actual
world? And yet he made a very proper hell out of it. But
when, on the other hand, he came to describe heaven and its
delights, he had an insurmountable difficulty before him, for
our world affords no materials at all for this. . . . Every
epic and dramatic poem can only represent a struggle, an
effort, a fight for happiness; never enduring and complete
happiness itself. It conducts its heroes through a thousand
dangers and difficulties to the goal; as soon as this is reached
it hastens to let the curtain fall; for now there would remain
ll, 192; III, 112; I, 191. “Man is a wolf to man”

SCHOPENHAUER

35fiT

nothing for it to do but to show that the glittering goal in
which the hero expected to find happiness had only disap-
pointed him, and that after its attainment he was no better
off than before . 1

We are unhappy married, and unmarried we are unhappy.
We are unhappy when alone, and unhappy in society: we are
like hedge-hogs clustering together for warmth, uncomfortable
when too closely packed, and yet miserable when kept apart.
It is all very funny; and “the life of every individual, if we
survey it as a whole, . . . and only lay stress on its most
significant features, is really always a tragedy; but gone
through in detail it has the character of a comedy.” 2 Think
of it :

At the age of five years to enter a spinning-cotton qr
other factory, and from that time forth to sit there daily,
first ten, then twelve, and ultimately fourteen hours, per-
forming the same mechanical labor, is to purchase dearly
the satisfaction of drawing breath. But this is the fate of
millions, and that of millions more is analogous to it. . . .
Again, under the firm crust of the planet dwell powerful
forces of nature, which, as soon as some accident affords
them free play, must necessarily destroy the crust, with
everything living upon it, as has already taken place at
least three times upon our planet, and will probably take
place oftener still. The earthquake of Lisbon, the earth-
quake of Haiti, the destruction of Pompeii, are only small
playful hints of what is possible , 8

In the face of all this, “optimism is a bitter mockery of
men’s woes ”; 4 and “we cannot ascribe to the Theodicy" of
Leibnitz, “as a methodical and broad unfolding of optimism,
any other merit than this, that it gave occasion later for the
immortal Candide of the great Voltaire; whereby Leibnitz 5 oft-
repeated and lame excuse for the evil of the world — that the

1 1 , 419 , 413 .

2 1 , 415 .

3 III, 389,895.

4l r 420.

356

THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY

bad sometimes brings about the good — received a confirmation
which was unexpected by him.” 1 In brief, “the nature of
life throughout presents itself to us as intended and calcu-
lated to awaken the conviction that nothing at all is worth
our striving, our efforts and struggles; that all good things
are vanity, the world in all its ends bankrupt, and life a busi-
ness which does not cover expenses.” 2

To be happy, one must be as ignorant as youth. Youth
thinks that willing and striving are joys; it has not yet dis-
covered the weary insatiableness of desire, and the fruitlessness
of fulfilment ; it does not yet see the inevitableness of defeat.

The cheerfulness and vivacity of youth are partly due to
the fact that when we are ascending the hill of life, death is
not visible ; it lies down at the bottom of the other side. . . .
Towards the close of life, every day we live gives us the same
kind of sensation as the criminal experiences at every step
on his way to the gallows. . . . To see how short life is, one
must have lived long. . . . Up to our thirty-sixth year we
may be compared, in respect to the way in which we use our
vital energy, to people who live on the interest of their
money; what they spend today they have again tomorrow.
But from the age of thirty-six onward, our position is like
that of the investor who begins to entrench on his capital.

, . . It is the dread of this calamity that makes love of pos-
session increase with age. . . . So far from youth being the
happiest period of life, there is much more truth in the re-
mark made by Plato, at the beginning of the Republic 9 that
the prize should rather be given to old age, because then at
last a man is freed from the animal passion which has hith-
erto never ceased to disquiet him. ... Yet it should not
be forgotten that, when this passion is extinguished, the true
kernel of life is gone, and nothing remains but the hollow
shell ; or, from another point of view, life then becomes like
a comedy which, begun by real actors, is continued and
brought to an end by automata dressed in their clothes. 8

1 III, 394.

2 III, 383.

* Counsels and Maxims,” 124-139.

SCHOPENHAUER

857

At the end, we meet death. Just as experience begins to co-
ordinate itself into wisdom, brain and body begin to decay.
“Everything lingers for but a moment, and hastens on to
death.” 1 And if death bides its time it is but playing with us
as a cat with a helpless mouse. “It is clear that as our walk-
ing is admittedly nothing but a constantly-prevented falling,
so the life of our bodies is nothing but a constantly-prevented
dying, an ever-postponed death.” 2 “Among the magnificent
ornaments and apparel of Eastern despots there is always a
costly vial of poison.” 3 The philosophy of the East under-
stands the omnipresence of death, and gives to its students
that calm aspect and dignified slowness of carriage, which
comes of a consciousness of the brevity of personal existence.
The fear of death is the beginning of philosophy, and the final
cause of religion. The average man cannot reconcile himself
to death; therefore he makes innumerable philosophies and
theologies ; the prevalence of a belief in immortality is a token
of the awful fear of death.

Just as theology is a refuge from death, so insanity is a
refuge from pain. “Madness comes as a way to avoid the
memory of suffering ” ; 4 it is a saving break in the thread of
consciousness; we can survive certain experiences or fears only
by forgetting them.

How unwillingly we think of things which powerfully in-
jure our interests, wound our pride, or interfere with our
wishes ; with what difficulty do we determine to lay such
things before our intellects for careful and serious investi-
gation. ... In that resistance of the will to allowing what
is contrary to it to come under the examination of the in-
tellect lies the place at which madness can break in upon the
mind. ... If the resistance of the will against the appre-
hension of some knowledge reaches such a degree that that
operation is not performed in its entirety, then certain ele-

HI, 454; III, 269.

2 “Counsels and Maxims,” 28, note.

3 1,119.

* I, 250.

358

THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY

ments or circumstances become for the intellect completely
suppressed, because the will cannot endure the sight of them;
and then, for the sake of the necessary connections, the
gaps that thus arise are filled up at pleasure ; thus madness
appears. For the intellect has given up its nature to please
the will; the man now imagines what does not exist. Yet
the madness which has thus arisen is the lethe of unendurable
suffering ; it was the last remedy of harassed nature, i. e.,
of the will . 1

The final refuge is suicide. Here at last, strange to say,
thought and imagination conquer instinct. Diogenes is said
to have put an end to himself by refusing to breathe ; — what
a victory over the will to live! But this triumph is merely
individual; the will continues in the species. Life laughs at
suicide, and smiles at death; for every deliberate death there
are thousands of indeliberate births. “Suicide, the wilful de-
struction of the single phenomenal existence, is a vain and
foolish act, for the thing-in-itself — the species, and life, and
will in general — remains unaffected by it, even as the rainbow
endures however fast the drops which support it for the mo-
ment may chance to fall.” 2 Misery and strife continue after
the death of the individual, and must continue, so long as will
is dominant in man. There can be no victory over the ills of
life until the will has been utterly subordinated to knowledge
and intelligence.

VI. THE WISDOM OF LIFE

1. Philosophy

Consider, first, the absurdity of the desire for material
goods. Fools believe that if they can only achieve wealth,
their wills can be completely gratified; a man of means is
supposed to be a man with means for the fulfilment of every
desire. “People are often reproached for wishing for money
above ad things, and for loving it more than anything else;

i III, 167 - 0 . A source of Freud.

'I, Slfi-

SCHOPENHAUER

359

but it is natural and even inevitable for people to love that
which, like an unwearied Proteus, is always ready to turn it-
self into whatever object their wandering wishes or their mani-
fold desires may fix upon. Everything else can satisfy only
one wish; money alone is absolutely good, . . . because it is
the abstract satisfaction of every wish.” 1 Nevertheless, a life
devoted to the acquisition of wealth is useless unless we know
how to turn it into joy ; and this is an art that requires culture
and wisdom. A succession of sensual pursuits never satisfies
for long; one must understand the ends of life as well as the
art of acquiring means. “Men are a thousand times more
intent on becoming rich than on acquiring culture, though it
is quite certain that what a man is contributes more to his
happiness than what he has.” 2 “A man who has no mental
needs is called a Philistine ”; 3 he does not know what to do
with his leisure — difficilis in otio quies; 4 he searches greedily
from place to place for new sensations; and at last he is con-
quered by that nemesis of the idle rich or the reckless volup-
tuary — ennui . 5

Not wealth but wisdom is the Way. “Man is at once im-
petuous striving of will (whose focus lies in the reproductive
system) , and eternal, free, serene subject of pure knowledge
(of which the focus is the brain ) .” 6 Marvelous to say,
knowledge, though born of the will, may yet master the will.
The possibility of the independence of knowledge first appears
in the indifferent way in which the intellect occasionally re-
sponds to the dictates of desire. “Sometimes the intellect re-
fuses to obey the will : e. g., when we try in vain to fix our
minds upon something, or when we call in vain upon the mem-
ory for something that was entrusted to it. The anger of the
will against the intellect on such occasions makes its relation

* Essays, “Wisdom of Life,” p. 47.

2 Ibid., p. 11.

8P. 41.

4 P. 39. “Quiet in leisure is difficult.”

« P. 22.

•I, 262 .

360

THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY

lo it, and the difference of the two, very plain. Indeed, vexed
by this anger, the intellect sometimes officiously brings what
was asked of it hours afterward, or even the following morn-
ing, quite unexpectedly and unseasonably.” 1 From this im-
perfect subservience the intellect may pass to domination.
“In accordance with previous reflection, or a recognized neces-
sity, a man suffers, or accomplishes in cold blood, what is of
the utmost, and often terrible, importance to him: suicide,
execution, the duel, enterprises of every kind fraught with
danger to life ; and in general, things against which his whole
animal nature rebels. Under such circumstances we see to
what an extent reason has mastered the animal nature.” 2
This power of the intellect over the will permits of deliber-
ate development ; desire can be moderated or quieted by knowl-
edge ; and above all by a determinist philosophy which
recognizes everything as the inevitable result of its antece-
dents. “Of ten things that annoy us, nine would not be able
to do so if we understood them thoroughly in their causes,
and therefore knew their necessity and true nature. . . .
For what bridle and bit are to an unmanageable horse, the in-
tellect is for the will in man .” 3 “It is with inward as with
outward necessity: nothing reconciles us so thoroughly as dis-
tinct knowledge.” 4 The more we know of our passions, the
less they control us; and “nothing will protect us from ex-
ternal compulsion so much as the control of ourselves.” 5 6 Si
vis tibi omnia subjicere, sub j ice te rationi .* The gpreatest of
all wonders is not the conqueror of the world, but the subduti-
of himself.

So philosophy purifies the will. But philosophy is to be

i II, 439.

2 1 , 112 .

8 II, 426.

* I, 396.

» “Counsels and Maxims,” p. 51.

6 “If you would subject all things to yourself, subject yourself to reason.”
—Seneca .

SCHOPENHAUER 3611

understood as experience and thought, not as mere reading or
passive study.

The constant streaming in of the thoughts of others must
confine and suppress our own; and indeed in the long run
paralyze the power of thought. ... The inclination of
most scholars is a kind of fuga vacui 1 from the poverty of
their own minds, which forcibly draws in the thoughts of
others. ... It is dangerous to read about a subject before
we have thought about it ourselves. ... When we read, an-
other person thinks for us; we merely repeat his mental
process. ... So it comes about that if anyone spends al-
most the whole day in reading, ... he gradually loses the
capacity for thinking. . . . Experience of the world may be
cooked upon as a kind of text, to which reflection and knowl-
edge form the commentary. Where there is a great deal of
reflection and intellectual knowledge, and very little experi-
ence, the result is like those books which have on each page
two lines of text to forty lines of commentary. 2

The first counsel, then, is Life before books ; and the second
is, Text before commentary. Read the creators rather than
the expositors and the critics. “Only from the authors them-
selves can we receive philosophic thoughts: therefore whoever
feels himself drawn to philosophy must seek out its immortal
teachers in the still sanctuary of their own works.” 8 One
work of genius is worth a thousand commentaries.

Within these limitations, the pursuit of culture, even
through books, is valuable, because our happiness depends on
what we have in our heads rather than on what we have in
our pockets. Even fame is folly; “other people’s heads are
a wretched place to be the home of a man’s true happiness.” *

What one human being can be to another is not a very
great deal; in the end everyone stands alone; and the im-

i Vacuum suction.

2 II, 254; Essays, “Books and Reading”; “Counsels and Maxims,” p. 21.

8 1, xxvii.

4 “Wisdom of Life,” p. 117.

THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY

pojgtant thing is, who it is that stands alone. . . „ The
happiness which we receive from ourselves is greater than
that which we obtain from our surroundings. . . • The
world in which a man lives shapes itself chiefly by the way
in which he looks at it. . . . Since everything which exists
or happens for a man exists only in his consciousness, and
happens for him alone, the most essential thing for a man
is the constitution of his consciousness. . . . Therefore it
is with great truth that Aristotle says, “To be happy means
to be self-sufficient.” 1

The way out of the evil of endless willing is the intelligent
contemplation of life, and converse with the achievements of
the great of all times and countries ; it is only for such loving
minds that these great ones have lived. “Unselfish intellect
rises like a perfume above the faults and follies of the world
of Will.” 2 Most men never rise above viewing things as ob-
jects of desire — hence their misery; but to see things purely
as objects of understanding is to rise to freedom.

When some external cause or inward disposition lifts us
suddenly out of the endless stream of willing, and delivers
knowledge out of the slavery of the will, the attention is no
longer directed to the motives of willing, but comprehends
things free from their relation to the will, and thus ob-
serves them without personal interest, without subjectivity,
purely objectively, — gives itself entirely up to them so far
as they are ideas, but not in so far as they are motives.
Then all at once the peace which we were always seeking,
but which always fled from us on the former path of the de-
sires, comes to us of its own accord, and it is well with us.

It is the painless state which Epicurus prized as the highest
good and as the state of the gods ; for we are for the moment
set free from the miserable striving of the will ; we keep the
Sabbath of the penal servitude of willing; the wheel of Ixion
stands still. 3

1 Ibid,, pp. 27, 4-9.

2 “Wisdom of Life,” 34, 108.

8 1, 254. Ixion, according to classical mythology, tried to win Juno from
Jupiter, and was punished by being bound to a forever-revolving: wheel.

SCHOPENHAUER

% Genius

Genius is the highest form of this will-less knowledge. The
lowest forms of life are entirely made up of will, without
knowledge ; man in general is mostly will and little knowledge;
genius is mostly knowledge and little will. “Genius consists
in this, that the knowing faculty has received a considerably
greater development than the service of the will demands.” 1
This involves some passage of force out of reproductive into
intellectual activity. “The fundamental condition of genius
is an abnormal predominance of sensibility and irritability
over reproductive power.” 2 Hence the enmity between genius
and woman, who represents reproduction and the subjugation
of the intellect to the will to live and make live. “Women may
have great talent, but no genius, for they always remain sub-
jective ”; 3 with them everything is personal, and is viewed as
a means to personal ends. On the other hand,

genius is simply the completest objectivity,— i. e., the objec-
tive tendency of the mind. ... Genius is the power of
leaving one’s own interests, wishes and aims entirely out or
sight, of entirely renouncing one’s own personality for
a time, so as to remain pure knowing subject, clear vision of
the world. . . . Therefore the expression of genius in a face
consists in this, that in it a decided predominance of knowl-
edge over will is visible. In ordinary countenances there is
a predominant expression of will, and we see that knowl-
edge only comes into activity under the impulse of the will,
and is directed merely by motives of personal interest and
advantage . 4

Freed from will, the intellect can see the object as it is;
“genius holds up to us the magic glass in which all that is
essential and significant appears to us collected and placed
in the clearest light, and what is accidental and foreign is left

1 III, 189.

2 III, 159.

*Ibid.

4J. 240, 243.

THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY

3 m

out.” 1 Thought pierces through passion as sunlight pours
through a cloud, and reveals the heart of things; it goes be-
hind the individual and particular to the “Platonic Idea”
or universal essence of which it is a form— just as the painter
sees, in the person whom he paints, not merely the individual
character and feature, but some universal quality and perma-
nent reality for whose unveiling the individual is only a symbol
and a means. The secret of genius, then, lies in the clear and
impartial perception of the objective, the essential, and the
universal.

It is this removal of the personal equation which leaves the
genius so maladapted in the world of will-ful, practical, per-
sonal activity. By seeing so far he does not see what is near ;
he is imprudent and “queer” ; and while his vision is hitched to
a star he falls into a well. Hence, partly, Jhe unsociability of
the genius ; he is thinking of the fundamental, the universal,
the eternal; others are thinking of the temporary, the specific,
the immediate ; his mind and theirs have no common ground,
and never meet. “As a rule, a man is sociable just in the de-
gree in which he is intellectually poor and generally vulgar.” a
The man of genius has his compensations, and does not need
company so much as people who live in perpetual dependence
on what is outside them. “The pleasure which he receives
from all beauty, the consolation which art affords, the enthusi-
asm of the artist, . . . enable him to forget the cares of life,”
and “repay him for the suffering that increases in propor-
tion to the clearness of consciousness, and for his desert lone-
liness among a different race of men.” 3

The result, however, is that the genius is forced into isola-
tion, and sometimes into madness ; the extreme sensitiveness
which brings him pain along with imagination and intuition,
combines with solitude and maladaptation to break the bonds
that hold the mind to reality. Aristotle was right again:

1 1, S21.

2 “Wisdom of Life,” p. 24. An (apologia pro vita sua.

»I, 345.

SCHOPENHAUER

365

“Men distinguished in philosophy, politics, poetry or art ap-
pear to be all of a melancholy temperament.” 1 The direct
connection of madness and genius “is established by the biog-
raphies of great men, such as Rousseau, Byron, Alfieri, etc.” *
“By a diligent search in lunatic asylums, I have found individ-
ual cases of patients who were unquestionably endowed with
great talents, and whose genius distinctly appeared through
their madness.” 8

Yet in these semi-madmen, these geniuses, lies the true
aristocracy of mankind. “With regard to the intellect, nature
is highly aristocratic. The distinctions which it has estab-
lished are greater than those which are made in any country
by birth, rank, wealth, or caste.” 3 4 * Nature gives genius
only to a few because such a temperament would be a hin-
drance in the normal pursuits of life, which require con-
centration on the specific and immediate. “Nature really in-
tended even learned men to be tillers of the soil; indeed,
professors of philosophy should be estimated according to this
standard; and then their achievements will be found to come
up to all fair expectations.” 6 *

3. Art

This deliverance of knowledge from servitude to the will,
this forgetting of the individual self and its material interest,
this elevation of the mind to the will-less contemplation of
truth, is the function of art. The object of science is the
universal that contains many particulars; the object of art
is the particular that contains a universal. “Even the por-
trait ought to be, as Winckelmann says, the ideal of the in-

1 In •‘Wisdom of Life ” p. 19.

2 The source of Lombroso — who adds Schopenhauer to the list.

8 1, 247.

4 II, 342.

8 III, 20. The professor of philosophy might avenge himself by pointing
out that by nature we seem to be hunters rather than tillers; that agri-
culture is a human invention, not a natural instinct.

366

THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY

dividual.” 1 In painting animals the most characteristic is
accounted the most beautiful, because it best reveals the spe-
cies. A work of art is successful, then, in proportion as it
suggests the Platonic Idea, or universal, of the group to which
the represented object belongs. The portrait of a man must
aim, therefore, not at photographic fidelity, but at exposing,
as far as possible, through one figure, some essential or uni-
versal quality of man.” 2 * Art is greater than science because
the latter proceeds by laborious accumulation and cautious
reasoning, while the former reaches its goal at once by intui-
tion and presentation ; science can get along with talent, but
art requires genius.

Our pleasure in nature, as in poetry or painting, is derived
from contemplation of the object without admixture of per-
sonal will. To the artist the Rhine is a varied series of be-
witching views, stirring the senses and the imagination with
suggestions of beauty ; but the traveler who is bent on his per-
sonal affairs “will see the Rhine and its banks only as a line,
and the bridges only as lines cutting the first line.” 8 The
artist so frees himself from personal concerns that “to artistic
perception it is all one whether we see the sunset from a prison
or from a palace.” 4 “It is this blessedness of will-less percep-
tion which casts an enchanting glamour over the past and the
distant, and presents them to us in so fair a light.” 5 Even
hostile objects, when we contemplate them without excitation
of the will, and without immediate danger, become sublime.
Similarly, tragedy may take an esthetic value, by delivering
us from the strife of the individual will, and enabling us to
see our suffering in a larger view. Art alleviates the ills of
life by showing us the eternal and universal behind the tran-

1 I, 290.

2 So in literature, character-portrayal rises to greatness — other things equal
— in proportion as the clearly-delineated individual represents also a uni-
versal type, like Faust and Marguerite or Quixote and Sancho Panza. .

s III, 145.

4 1,265.

* I, 256.

SCHOPENHAUER

367

sitory and the individual. Spinoza was right: “in so far as
the mind sees things in their eternal aspect it participates in
eternity.” 1

This power of the arts to elevate us above the strife of wills
is possessed above all by music. 2 “Music is by no means like
the other arts, the copy of the Ideas” or essences of things, but
it is “the copy of the will itself” ; it shows us the eternally mov-
ing, striving, wandering will, always at last returning to itself
to begin its striving anew. “This is why the effect of music
is more powerful and penetrating than the other arts, for
they speak only of shadows, while it speaks of the things it-
self.” 3 It differs too from the other arts because it affects
our feelings directly, 4 and not through the medium of ideas;
it speaks to something subtler than the intellect. What sym-
metry is to the plastic arts, rhythm is to music; hence music
and architecture are antipodal; architecture, as Goethe said,
is frozen music ; and symmetry is rhythm standing still.

4. Religion

It dawned upon Schopenhauer’s maturity that his theory of
art — as the withdrawal of the will, and the contemplation of
the eternal and universal — was also a theory of religion. In
youth he had received very little religious training; and his
temper did not incline him to respect the ecclesiastical organ-
izations of his time. He despised theologians: “As ultima
ratio” or the final argument, “of theologians we find among
many nations the stake” ; 5 and he described religion as “the

1 1, 230. Cf. Goethe: “There is no better deliverance from the world” of
Strife “than through art .” — Elective A ffinities, New York, 1902, p. 336.

2 “Schopenhauer was the first to recognize and designate with philosophic
clearness the position of music with reference to the other fine arts.”—
Wagner, Beethoven, Boston, 1872, p. 23.

3 1, 333.

4 Hanslick ( The Beautiful in Music, London, 1891, p. 23) objects to Oils,
and argues that music affects only the imagination directly. Strictly, of
course, it affects only the senses directly.

s II, 365.

368

THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY

metaphysics of the masses.” 1 But in later years he began
to see a profound significance in certain religious practices and
dogmas. “The controversy which is so perseveringly carried
on in our own day between supernaturalists and rationalists
rests on the failure to recognize the allegorical nature of all
religion.” 2 Christianity, for example, is a profound philos-
ophy of pessimism ; “the doctrine of original sin (assertion of
the will) and of salvation (denial of the will) is the great
truth which constitutes the essence of Christianity.” 8 Past-
ing is a remarkable expedient for weakening those desires that
lead never to happiness but either to disillusionment or to
further desire. “The power by virtue of which Christianity
was able to overcome first Judaism, and then the heathenism
of Greece and Rome, lies solely in its pessimism, in the confes-
sion that our state is both exceedingly wretched and sinful,
while Judaism and heathenism were both optimistic ”: 4 they
thought of religion as a bribe to the heavenly powers for aid
towards earthly success; Christianity thought of religion as
a deterrent from the useless quest of earthly happiness. In
ihe midst of worldly luxury and power it has held up the ideal
vf the saint, the Fool in Christ, who refuses to fight, and ab-
solutely overcomes the individual will . 5

Buddhism is profounder than Christianity, because it makes
the destruction of the will the entirety of religion, and
preaches Nirvana as the goal of all personal development.
The Hindus were deeper than the thinkers of Europe, because
their interpretation of the world was internal and intuitive,
not external and intellectual; the intellect divides everything,
intuition unites everything; the Hindus saw that the “I” is a
delusion; that the individual is merely phenomenal, and that
the only reality is the Infinite One — “That art thou.” “Who-
ever is able to say this to himself, with regard to every being

i Essays, “Religion,’* p. 2.

2 II, 369.

s I, 524.

4 II, 372.

£ I, 493.

SCHOPENHAUER

369

with whom he comes in contact,” — whoever is clear-eyed and
clear-souled enough to see that we are all members of one
organism, all of us little currents in an ocean of will, — he
“is certain of all virtue and blessedness, and is on the direct
road to salvation.” 1 Schopenhauer does not think that Chris-
tianity will ever displace Buddhism in the East: “it is just the
same as if we fired a bullet against a cliff.” 2 Rather, In-
dian philosophy streams into Europe, and will profoundly al-
ter our knowledge and our thought. “The influence of the
Sanskrit literature will penetrate not less deeply than did
the revival of Greek letters in the fifteenth century.” 3

The ultimate wisdom, then, is Nirvana: to reduce one’s self
to a minimum of desire and will. The world-will is stronger
than ours ; let us yield at once. “The less the will is excited,
the less we suffer.” 4 The great masterpieces of painting have
always represented countenances in which “we see the expres-
sion of the completest knowledge, which is not directed to par-
ticular things, but has . . . become the quieter of all will.” 6
“That peace which is above all reason, that perfect calm of
the spirit, that deep rest, that inviolable confidence and seren-
ity, ... as Raphael and Correggio have represented it, is
an entire and certain gospel ; only knowledge remains, the will
has vanished.” 6

vn. THE WISDOM OF DEATH

And yet, something more is needed. By Nirvana the in-
dividual achieves the peace of will-lessness, and finds salvation ;
but after the individual? Life laughs at the death of the in-
dividual; it will survive him in his offspring, or in the offspring
of others; even if his little stream of life runs dry there are

1 1, 483.

21, 460.

»I, xiii. Perhaps we are witnessing a fulfillment of this prophecy in the
growth of theosophy and similar faiths.

* “Counsels and Maxims,” p. 19.

e I, 300.

6 531.

370

THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY

a thousand other streams that grow broader and deeper
with every generation. How can Man be saved? Is there a
Nirvana for the race as well as for the individual?

Obviously, the only final and radical conquest of the will
must lie in stopping up the source of life — the will to repro-
duce. “The satisfaction of the reproductive impulse is ut-
terly and intrinsically reprehensible because it is the strongest
affirmation of the lust for life.” 1 What crime have these chil-
dren committed that they should be born?

If, now, we contemplate the turmoil of life, we behold all
occupied with its want and misery, straining all their powers
to satisfy its infinite needs and to ward off its multifarious
sorrows, yet without daring to hope for anything else than
simply the preservation of this tormented existence for a
short span of time. In between, however, and in the midst
of this tumult, we see the glance of two lovers meet long-
ingly; yet why so secretly, fearfully, and stealthily? Be-
cause these lovers are the traitors who seek to perpetuate the
whole want and drudgery which would otherwise speedily
reach an end; . . . here lies the profound reason for the
shame connected with the process of generation . 2

It is woman that is the culprit here; for when knowledge
has reached to will-lessness, her thoughtless charms allure man
again into reproduction. Youth has not intelligence enough
to see how brief these charms must be; and when the intelli-
gence comes, it is too late.

With young girls Nature seems to have had in view what,
in the language of the drama, is called a striking effect; as
for a few years she dowers them with a wealth of beauty and
is lavish in her gift of charm, at the expense of all the rest of
their lives ; so that during those years they may capture the
fancy of some man to such a degree that he is hurried away
into undertaking the honorable care of them ... as long as
they live— a step for which there would not seem to be any

1 In Wallace, p. 29.

2 III, 374; I, 423.

SCHOPENHAUER

371

sufficient warrant if only reason directed man’s thoughts.

. . . Here, as elsewhere, Nature proceeds with her usual
economy; for just as the female ant, after fecundation, loses
her wings, which are then superfluous, nay, actually a dan-
ger to the business of breeding; so, after giving birth to one
or two children, a woman generally loses her beauty; prob-
ably, indeed, for similar reasons . 1

Young men ought to reflect that “if the object which in-
spires them today to write madrigals and sonnets had been
born eighteen years earlier, it would scarcely have won a
glance from them.” 2 After all, men are much more beautiful
in body than women.

It is only a man whose intellect is clouded by his sexual im-
pulse that could give the name of the fair sea: to that under-
sized, narrow-shouldered, broad-hipped, and short-legged
race; for the whole beauty of the sex is bound up with this
impulse. Instead of calling them beautiful there would be
more warrant for describing women as the unesthetic sex.
Neither for music, nor for poetry, nor for the fine arts, have
they really and truly any sense of susceptibility ; it is a mere
mockery if they make a pretense of it in order to assist their
endeavor to please. . . . They are incapable of taking a
purely objective interest in anything. . . . The most distin-
guished intellects among the whole sex have never managed
to produce a single achievement in the fine arts that is really
genuine and original; or given to the world any work of
permanent value in any sphere . 3 • -

This veneration of women is a product of Christianity and
of German sentimentality; and it is in turn a cause of that
Romantic movement which exalts feeling, instinct and will
above the intellect . 4 The Asiatics know better, and frankly
recognize the inferiority of woman. “When the laws gave
women equal rights with men, they ought also to have endowed

i Essay on Women, p. 73.

3111, 339.

» Essay on Women, p. 79.

4111,209-14.

872 THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY

them with masculine intellects.” 1 Asia again shows a finer
honesty than ours in its marriage institutions; it accepts as
normal and legal the custom of polygamy, which, though so
widely practiced among us, is covered with the fig-leaf of a
phrase. “Where are there any real monogamists?” 2 * — And
how absurd it is to give property-rights to women! “All
women are, with rare exceptions, inclined to extravagance,”
because they live only in the present, and their chief out-door
sport is shopping. “Women think that it is men’s business to
earn money, and theirs to spend it”; 8 this is their conception
of the division of labor. “I am therefore of opinion that
women should never be allowed altogether to manage their own
concerns, but should always stand under actual male supervi-
sion, be it of father, of husband, of son, or of the state — as is
the case in Hindostan; and that consequently they should
never be given full power to dispose of any property they have
not themselves acquired.” 4 5 It was probably the luxury and
extravagance of the women of Louis XIII’s court that brought
on the general corruption of government which culminated in
the French Revolution. 6

The less we have to do with women, then, the better. They
are not even a “necessary evil”; 6 life is safer and smoother
without them. Let inen recognize the snare that lies in wom-
en’s beauty, and the absurd comedy of reproduction will end.
The development, of intelligence will weaken or frustrate the
will to reproduce, and will thereby at last achieve the extinc-
tion of the. race. Nothing could form a finer denouement
to the insane tragedy of the restless will; — why should the
curtain that has just fallen upon defeat and death always rise
again upon a new life, a new . struggle, and a new. defeat?

1 Essay on Women, p. 84.

2 Ibid., p. 86.

zibicL, p. 75.

* In Wallace, p. 80. An echo of Schopenhauer’s dissatisfaction with his
mother’s extravagance.

5 Essay on Women, p. 89.

« Carlyle’s phrase.

SCHOPENHAUER

373

How long shall we be lured into this much-ado-about-nothing,
this endless pain that leads only to a painful end? When shall
we have the courage to fling defiance into the face of the Will,
—to tell it that the loveliness of life is a lie, and that the
greatest boon of all is death?

vm. CRITICISM

The natural response to such a philosophy is a medical di-
agnosis, of the age and of the man.

Let us realize again that we have here a phenomenon akin
to that which, in the days after Alexander and after Caesar,
brought first to Greece and then to Rome a flood of Oriental
faiths and attitudes. It is characteristic of the East to see
the external Will in nature as so much more powerful than the
will in man, and to come readily to a doctrine of resignation
and despair. As the decay of Greece brought the pallor of
Stoicism and the hectic flush of Epicureanism upon the cheeks
of Hellas, so the chaos of the Napoleonic wars brought into
the soul of Europe that plaintive weariness which made Scho-
penhauer its philosophic voice. Europe had a terrible head-
ache in 1815. 1

The personal diagnosis can take its lead from Schopen-
hauer’s admission that a man’s happiness depends on what he
is, rather than on external circumstance. Pessimism is an in-
dictment of the pessimist. Given a diseased constitution and
a neurotic mind, a life of empty leisure and gloomy ennui ,
and there emerges the proper physiology for Schopenhauer’s
philosophy. One must have leisure to be a pessimist; an ac-
tive life almost always brings good spirits in body and in mind.
Schopenhauer admires the serenity that comes of modest aims
and a steady life, 2 but he could hardly speak of these from
personal experience. Difficilis in otio quies , truly; he had
money enough for continuous leisure, and he found continu-

1 Compare the apathy and despondency of Europe today (1924), and the
popularity of such books as Spengler’s Downfall of the Western World .

2 1, 422.

874

THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY

ous leisure to be more intolerable than continuous work. Per-
haps the tendency of philosophers toward melancholy is due
to the unnaturalness of sedentary occupations; too often an
attack upon life is merely a symptom of the lost art of ex-
cretion.

Nirvana is the ideal of a listless man, a Childe Harold or
a R4n6, who has begun by desiring too much, by staking all
on one passion, and then, having lost, spends the remainder
of his life in a passionless and petulant boredom. If intellect
arises as the servant of will, it is quite likely that the particu-
lar product of the intellect which we know as the philosophy of
Schopenhauer was the cover and apology of a diseased and
indolent will. And no doubt his early experiences with women
and with men developed an abnormal suspiciousness and sensi-
tivity, as it did in Stendhal and Flaubert and Nietzsche. He
became cynical and solitary. He writes: “A friend in need
is not a friend indeed ; he is merely a borrower” ; 1 and, “Do not
tell a friend anything that you would conceal from an en-
emy.” 2 He advises a quiet, monotonous, hermit life ; he fears
society, and has no sense of the values or joys of human as-
sociation. 8 But happiness dies when it is not shared.

There is, of course, a large element of egotism in pessimism :
the world is not good enough for us, and we turn up our
philosophic noses to it. But this is to forget Spinoza’s les*
son, that our terms of moral censure and approbation are
merely human judgments, mostly irrelevant when applied to
the cosmos as a whole. Perhaps our supercilious disgust with
existence is a cover for a secret disgust with ourselves: we
have botched and bungled our lives, and we cast the blame
upon the “environment,” or the “world,” which have no
tongues to utter a defense. The mature man accepts the nah
ural limitations of life; he does not expect Providence to be
prejudiced in his favor; he does not ask for loaded dice with

x “Counsels and Maxims,” p. 86.

2 Ibid,, p. 96.

8 Ibid,, pp. 24, 37.

SCHOPENHAUER

37S

which to play the game of life. He knows, with Carlyle, that
there is no sense in vilifying the sun because it will not light
our cigars. And perhaps, if we are clever enough to help
it, the sun will do even that; and this vast neutral cosmos
may turn out to be a pleasant place enough if we bring a little
sunshine of our own to help it out. In truth the world is
neither with us nor against us; it is but raw material in our
hands, and can be heaven or hell according to what we are.

Part of the cause of pessimism, in Schopenhauer and his
contemporaries, lay in their romantic attitudes and expecta-
tions. Youth expects too much of the world ; pessimism is
the morning after optimism, just as 1815 had to pay for 1789.
The romantic exaltation and liberation of feeling, instinct and
will, and the romantic contempt for intellect, restraint, and
order, brought their natural penalties; for “the world,” as
Horace Walpole said, “is a comedy for those who think, but
a tragedy for those who feel.” “Perhaps no movement has
been so prolific of melancholy as emotional romanticism. . . .
When the romanticist discovers that his ideal of happiness
works out into actual unhappiness, he does not blame his ideal.
He simply assumes that the world is unworthy of a being so
exquisitely organized as himself.” 1 How could a capricious
universe ever satisfy a capricious soul?

The spectacle of Napoleon’s rise to empire, Rousseau’s
denunciation — and Kant’s critique— of the intellect, and his
own passionate temperament and experiences, conspired to
suggest to Schopenhauer the primacy and ultimacy of the
will. Perhaps, too, Waterloo and St. Helena helped to de-
velop a pessimism bom, no doubt, of bitter personal contact
with the stings and penalties of life. Here was the most dy-
namic individual will in all history, imperiously commanding
continents ; and yet its doom was as certain and ignominious
as that of the insect to which the day of its birth brings in-
enviable death. It never occurred to Schopenhauer that it
was better to have fought and lost than never to have fought

i Babbitt, Rousseau and Romanticism . p. 208.

m

THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY

at all; he did not feel, like the more masculine and vigorous
Hegel, the glory and desirability of strife ; he longed for peace,
and lived in the midst of war. Everywhere he saw strife ; he
eould not see, behind the strife, the friendly aid of neighbors,
the rollicking joy of children and young men, the dances of
vivacious girls, the willing sacrifices of parents and lovers, the
patient bounty of the soil, and the renaissance of spring.

And what if desire, fulfilled, leads only to another desire?
Perhaps it is better that we should never be content. Happi-
ness, says an old lesson, lies rather in achievement than in
possession Or satiation. The Healthy man asks not so much
for happiness as for an opportunity to exercise his capacities ;
and if he must pay the penalty of pain for this freedom and
this power he makes the forfeit cheerfully ; it is not too great
a price. We need resistance to raise us, as it raises the air-
plane or the bird ; we need obstacles against which to sharpen
cur strength and stimulate our growth. Life without tragedy
fould be unwgrthy of a man . 1

Is it true that “he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sor-
row,” and that it is the most highly organized beings that
suffer most? Yes ; but it is also true that the growth of knowl-
edge increases joy as well as sorrow, and that the subtlest de-
lights, as well as the keenest pains, are reserved for the de-
veloped soul. Voltaire rightly preferred the Brahmin’s “un-
happy” wisdom to the blissful ignorance of the peasant woman;
we wish to experience life keenly and deeply, even at the cost
of pain ; we wish to venture into its innermost secrets, even at
the cost of disillusionment . 2 Virgil, who had tasted every

iCf. Schopenhauer himself: “To have no regular work, no set sphere of
activity, — what a miserable thing it is! . . . Effort, struggles with difficulties!
that is as natural to a man as grubbing in the ground is to a mole. To
have all his wants satisfied is something intolerable — the feeling of stagnation
which comes from pleasures that last too long. To overcome difficulties is
to experience the full delight of existence.” — “Counsels and Maxims,” p. 53.
One would like to know more of what the maturer Schopenhauer thought
of the brilliant philosophy of his youth.

2 Anatole France (Voltaire’s last avatar) has dedicated one of his
masterpieces — The Human Tragedy — to the task of showing that though

SCHOPENHAUER

877

pleasure, and knew the luxuries of imperial favor, at last
“tired of everything except the joys of understanding.’*
When the senses cease to satisfy, it is something to have won
access, however arduously, to comradeship with those artists,
poets and philosophers whom only the mature mind can com-
prehend. Wisdom is a bitter-sweet delight, deepened by the
very discords that enter into its harmony.

Is pleasure negative? Only a sorely wounded soul, draw-
ing itself in from contact with the world, could have uttered
so fundamental a blasphemy against life. What is pleasure
but the harmonious operation of our instincts? — and how can
pleasure be negative except where the instinct at work makes
for retreat rather than for approach? The pleasures of es-
cape and rest, of submission and security, of solitude and quiet
are no doubt negative, because the instincts that impel us to
them are essentially negative — forms of flight and fear; but
shall we say the same of the pleasures that come when positive
instincts are in command — instincts of acquisition and posses-
sion, of pugnacity and mastery, of action and play, of associa-
tion and love? Is the joy of laughter negative, or the romp-
ing of the child, or the song of the mating bird, or the crow
of Chanticleer, or the creative ecstasy of art? Life itself is a
positive force, and every normal function of it holds some
delight.

It remains true, no doubt, that death is terrible. Much of
its terror disappears if one has lived a normal life; one must
have lived well in order to die well. And would deathlessness
delight us? Who envies the fate of Ahasuerus, to whom im-
mortal life was sent as the heaviest punishment that could
be inflicted upon man? And why is death terrible if not be-
cause life is sweet? We need not say with Napoleon that all
who fear death are atheists at heart; but we may surely say

"the joy of understanding is a sad joy,” yet “those who have once tasted
it would not exchange it for all the frivolous gaieties and empty hopes of
the vulgar herd.” Cf. The Garden of Epicurus, New York, 1908, p. 120.

378 THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY

that a man who lives to three-scoffe years and ten has survived
his pessimism. No man, said Goethe, is a pessimist after
thirty. And hardly before twenty; pessimism is a luxury of
self-conscious and self-important youth ; youth that comes out
of the warm bosom of the communistic family into the cold
atmosphere of individualistic competition and greed, and then
yearns back to its mother’s breast ; youth that hurls itself madly
against the windmills and evils of the world, and sadly sheds
Utopias and ideals with every year. But before twenty is the
joy of the body, and after thirty is the joy of the mind; before
twenty is the pleasure of protection and security; and after
thirty, the joy of parentage and home.

How should a man avoid pessimism who has lived almost all
his life ih a boarding-house? And who abandoned his only
child to illegitimate anonymity? 1 At the bottom of Scho-
penhauer’s unhappiness was his rejection of the normal life, —
his rejection of women and marriage and children. He finds
in parentage the greatest of evils, where a healthy man finds
in it the greatest of life’s satisfactions. He thinks that th«
stealthiness of love is due to shame in continuing the race —
could anything be more pedantically absurd? He sees in love
only the sacrifice of the individual to the race, and ignores the
delights with which the instinct repays the sacrifice, — delights
so great that they have inspired most of the poetry of the
world. 2 He knows woman only as shrew and as sinner, and
he imagines that there are no other types. He thinks that
the man who undertakes to support a wife is a fool ; 3 but ap-
parently such men are not much more unhappy than our pas-
sionate apostle of single infelicity; and (as Balzac said) it
costs as much to support a vice as it does to support a family.
He scorns the beauty of woman, — as if there were any forms
©f beauty that we could spare, and that we should not cherish

1 Finot, The Science of Happiness, New York, 1914, p. 70.

2 Cf., again, Schopenhauer himself: “It is just this not seeking of one’s
own things (which is everywhere the stamp of greatness) that gives tc
{passionate love the touch of sublimity.” — III, 368.

s Essay on Women, p. 73.

SCHOPENHAUER 373

as the color and fragrance of life. What hatred of women one
mishap had generated in this unfortunate soul!

There are other difficulties, more technical and less vital, in
this remarkable and stimulating philosophy. How can suicide
ever occur in a world where the only real force is the will to
live? How can the intellect, begotten and brought up as
servant of the will, ever achieve independence and objectivity?
Does genius lie in knowledge divorced from will, or does it con-
tain, as its driving force, an immense power of will, even a
large alloy of personal ambition and conceit? 1 Is madness
connected with genius in general, or rather with only the “ro-
mantic” type of genius (Byron, Shelley, Poe, Heine, Swin-
burne, Strindberg, Dostoievski, etc.) ; and is not the “classic”
and profounder type of genius exceptionally sound (Socrates,
Plato, Spinoza, Bacon, Newton, Voltaire, Goethe, Darwin,
Whitman, etc.) ? What if the proper function of intellect
and philosophy is not the denial of the will but the coordina-
tion of desires into a united and harmonious will? What if
“will” itself, except as the unified product of such coordina-
tion, is a mythical abstraction, as shadowy as “force”?

Nevertheless there is about this philosophy a blunt honesty
by the side of which most optimistic creeds appear as soporific
hypocrisies. It is all very well to say, with Spinoza, that good
and bad are subjective terms, human prejudices; and yet we
are compelled to judge this world not from any “impartial”
view, but from the standpoint of actual human sufferings
and needs. It was well that Schopenhauer should force
philosophy to face the raw reality of evil, and should point the
nose of thought to the human tasks of alleviation. It has been
harder, since his day, for philosophy to live in the unreal at-
mosphere of a logic-chopping metaphysics ; thinkers begin to
realize that thought without action is a disease.

After all, Schopenhauer opened the eyes of psychologists
to the subtle depth and omnipresent force of instinct. In-

i Cf. Schopenhauer: “The greatest intellectual capacities are only found
in connection with a vehement and passionate will.” — II, 413.

380

THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY

tellectualism — the conception of man as above all a thinking
animal, consciously adapting means to rationally chosen ends
— fell sick with Rousseau, took to its bed with Kant, and died
with Schopenhauer. After two centuries of introspective
analysis philosophy found, behind thought, desire; and be-
hind the intellect, instinct; — just as, after a century of ma-
terialism, physics finds, behind matter, energy. We owe it
to Schopenhauer that he revealed our secret hearts to us,
showed us that our desires are the axioms of our philosophies,
and cleared the way to an understanding of thought as no
mere abstract calculation of impersonal events, but as a flexible
instrument of action and desire.

Finally, and despite exaggerations, Schopenhauer taught
us again the necessity of genius, and the value of art. He saw
that the ultimate good is beauty, and that the ultimate joy lies
in the creation or cherishing of the beautiful. He joined
with Goethe and Carlyle in protest against the attempt of
Hegel and Marx and Buckle to eliminate genius as a funda-
mental factor in human history ; in an age when all the great
seemed dead he preached once more the ennobling worship of
heroes. And with all his faults he succeeded in adding an-
other name to theirs.

CHAPTER Vm

HERBERT SPENCER

I. COMTE AND DARWIN

T HE Kantian philosophy which announced itself as
“prolegomena to all future metaphysics,” was, by
malicious intent, a murderous thrust at traditional
modes of speculation; and, contrary to intent, a damaging
blow to all metaphysics whatsoever. For metaphysics had
meant, throughout the history of thought, an attempt to dis-
cover the ultimate nature of reality ; now men learned, on the
most respectable authority, that reality could never be experi-
enced; that it was a “noumenon,” conceivable but not know-
able ; and that even the subtlest human intelligence could never
pass beyond phenomena, could never pierce the veil of Maya.
I’he metaphysical extravagances of Fichte, Hegel and Schell-
3ng, with their various readings of the ancient riddle, their Ego
and Idea and Will, had canceled one another into zero; and
by the eighteen-thirties the universe was generally conceded
to have guarded its secret well. After a generation of Ab-
solute intoxication, the mind of Europe reacted by taking a
pledge against metaphysics of any kind.

Since the French had made a specialty of scepticism, it was
natural; that they should produce the founder (if therg are
SucE persons in philosophy, where every idea is hallowed witE
years) of the “positivist” movement. Auguste Comte — or, as
his parents called him, Isidore Auguste Marie Fran£ois
Xavier Comte — was born at Montpellier in 1798. The idol
of his youth was Benjamin Franklin, whom he called the
modem Socrates. “You know that at five-and-twenty he
formed the design of becoming perfectly wise, and that he

381

THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY

882

fulfilled his design. I have dared to undertake the same thing,
though I am not yet twenty.” He made a fair start by be-
coming secretary to the great Utopian, Saint-Simon, who
passed on to him the reforming enthusiasm of Turgot and
Condorcet, and the idea that social, like physical phenom-
ena, might be reduced to laws and science, and that all philoso-
phy should be focused upon the moral and political
improvement of mankind. But, like most of us who set out to
reform the world, Comte found it difficult enough to manage
his own home ; in 1827, after two years of marital infelicity, he
suffered a mental break-down, and attempted suicide in the
Seine. To his rescuer, therefore, we owe something of the
five volumes of Positive Philosophy which appeared between
1830 and 1842, and the four volumes of Positive Polity which
appeared between 1851 and 1854.

This was an undertaking which, in scope and patience^
was second in modem times only to Spencer’s “Synthetic
Philosophy.” Here the sciences were classified according to
the decreasing simplicity and generality of their subject-
matter: mathematics, astronomy, physics, chemistry, biology,
and sociology; each rested on the results of all the sciences be-
fore it ; therefore sociology was the apex of the sciences, and
the others had their reason for existence only in so far as they
could provide illumination for the science of society. Science,
in the sense of exact knowledge, had spread from one subject-
matter to another in the order given ; and it was natural that
the complex phenomena of social life should be the last to yield
to scientific method. In each field of thought the historian of
ideas could observe a Law of Three Stages : at first the subject
was conceived in the theological fashion, and all problems
were explained by the will of some deity — as when the stars
were gods, or the chariots of gods; later, the same subject
reached the metaphysical stage, and was explained by meta-
physical abstractions — as when the stars moved in circles be-
cause circles were the most perfect figure; finally the subject
was reduce ’' to positive science by precise observation, hy-

HERBERT SPENCER

383

pothesis, and experiment, and its phenomena were explained
through the regularities of natural cause and effect. The
“Will of God” yields to such airy entities as Plato’s “Ideas”
or Hegel’s “Absolute Idea,” and these in turn yield to the
laws of science. Metaphysics is a stage of arrested develop-
ment: the time had come, said Comte, to abandon these
puerilities. Philosophy was not something different from
science ; it was the coordination of all the sciences with a view
to the improvement of human life.

There was a certain dogmatic intellectualism about this
positivism which perhaps reflected the disillusioned and
isolated philosopher. When, in 1845, Mme. Clotilde de Vaux
(whose husband was spending his life in jail) took charge
of Comte’s heart, his affection for her warmed and colored his
thought, and led to a reaction in which he placed feeling above
intelligence as a reforming force, and concluded that the world
could be redeemed only by a new religion, whose function it
should be to nourish and strengthen the feeble altruism of
human nature by exalting Humanity as the object of a
ceremonial worship. Comte spent his old age devising for
this Religion of Humanity an intricate system of priesthood,
sacraments, prayers, and discipline ; and proposed a new
calendar in which the names of pagan deities and medieval
saints should be replaced by the heroes of human progress.
As a wit put it, Comte offered the world all of Catholicism
except Christianity.

The positivist movement fell in with the flow of English
thought, which took its spirit from a life of industry and
trade, and looked up to matters of fact with a certain rev-
erence. The Baconian tradition had turned thought in the
direction of things, mind in the direction of matter ; the
materialism of Hobbes, the sensationalism of Locke, the
scepticism of Hume, the ultilitarianism of Bentham, were so
many variations on the theme of a practical and busy life.
Berkeley was an Irish discord in this domestic symphony.
Hegel laughed at the English habit of honoring physical and

884

THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY

chemical equipment with the name of “philosophical instru-
ments”; but such a term came naturally to men who agreed
with Comte and Spencer in defining philosophy as a generali-
zation of the results of all the sciences. So it was that the
positivist movement found more adherents in England than in
the land of its birth; adherents perhaps not so fervent as the
generous Littre, but endowed with that English tenacity which
kept John Stuart Mill (1806-78) and Frederick Harrison
(1881-1923) faithful all their lives to Comte’s philosophy,
while their English caution kept them aloof from his cere-
monious religion.

Meanwhile the Industrial Revolution, born of a little
science, was stimulating science in return. Newton and
Herschel had brought the stars to England, Boyle and Davy
had opened the treasures of chemistry, Faraday was making
the discoveries that would electrify the world, Rumford and
Joule were demonstrating the transformability and equiva-
lence of force and the conservation of energy. The sciences
were reaching a stage of complexity which would make a
bewildered world welcome a synthesis. But above all these
intellectual influences that stirred England in the youth of
Herbert Spencer was the growth of biology, and the doctrine
of evolution. Science had been exemplarily international in
the development of this doctrine: Kant had spoken of the
possibility of apes becoming men; Goethe had written of
“the metamorphosis of plants ; Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck
had propounded the theory that species had evolved from
simpler forms by the inheritance of the effects of use and
disuse; and in 1830 St. Hilaire shocked Europe, and glad-
dened old Goethe, by almost triumphing against Cuvier in
that famous debate on evolution which seemed like another
Ernani, another revolt against classic ideas of changeless rules
and orders in a changeless world.

In the eighteen-fifties evolution was in the air. Spencer
expressed the idea, long before Darwin, in an essay on “The
Development Hypothesis” (1852), and in his Principles of

HERBERT SPENCER 385

Psychology { 1855). In 1858 Darwin and Wallace read their
famous papers before the Linnaean Society ; and in 1859 the
old world, as the good bishops thought, crashed to pieces with
the publication of the Origm of Species . Here was no mere
vague notion of evolution, of higher species evolving somehow
from lower ones ; but a detailed and richly documented theory
of the actual mode and process of evolution “by means of
natural selection, or the preservation of favored races in the
struggle for life.” In one decade all the world was talking
about evolution. What lifted Spencer to the crest of this
wave of thought was the clarity of mind which suggested the
application of the evolution idea to every field of study, and
the range of mind which brought almost all knowledge to pay
tribute to his theory. As mathematics had dominated phi-
losophy in the seventeenth century, giving to the world
Descartes, Hobbes, Spinoza, Leibnitz and Pascal ; and as psy-
chology had written philosophy in Berkeley and Hume and
Condillac and Kant ; so in the nineteenth century, in Schelling
and Schopenhauer, in Spencer and Nietzsche and Bergson,
biology was the background of philosophic thought. In each
case the epochal ideas were the piece-meal production of
separate men, more or less obscure ; but the ideas are attached
to the men who coordinated and clarified them, as the New
World took the name of Amerigo Vespucci because he drew
a map. Herbert Spencer was the Vespucci of the age of
Darwin, and something of its Columbus too.

n. THE DEVELOPMENT OF SPENCER

He was born at Derby in 1820. In both lines his ancestors
were Non-conformists or Dissenters. His father’s mother had
been a devoted follower of John Wesley; his father’s brother,
Thomas, though an Anglican clergyman, led a Wesleyan
movement within the Church, never attended a concert or a
play, and took an active part in movements for political re-
form. This drive to heresy became stronger in the father,

886

THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY

and culminated in the almost obstinate individualism of
Herbert Spencer himself. The father never used the super-
natural to explain anything; he was described by one ac-
quaintance (though Herbert considered this an exaggeration)
as “without faith or religion whatever, so far as one could
see.” 1 He was inclined to science, and wrote an Inventional
Geometry. In politics he was an individualist like his son and
“would never take off his hat to anyone, no matter of what
rank.” 2 * “If he did not understand some question my mother
put, he would remain silent; not asking what the question
was, and letting it go unanswered. He continued this course
all through his life, notwithstanding its futility; there re-
sulted no improvement.” 8 One is reminded (except for the
silence) of Herbert Spencer’s resistance, in his later years, to
the extension of State functions.

The father, as well as an uncle and the paternal grand-
father, were teachers of private schools; and yet the son, who
was to be the most famous English philosopher of his century,
remained till forty an uneducated man. Herbert was lazy,
and the father was indulgent. At last, when he was thirteen,
Herbert was sent to Hinton to study under his uncle, wh<?
had a reputation for severity. But Herbert promptly ran
away from the uncle, and trudged all the way back to the
paternal home at Derby — 48 miles the first day, 47 the next,
and 20 the third, all on a little bread and beer. Neverthe-
less he returned to Hinton after a few weeks, and stayed for
three years. It was the only systematic schooling that he
ever received. He could not say, later, just what it was he
learned there ; no history, no natural science, no general litera-
ture. He says, with characteristic pride : “That neither in
boyhood nor youth did I receive a single lesson in English,
and that I have remained entirely without formal knowledge
of syntax down to the present hour, are facts which should

1 Spencer, Autobiography, New York, 1904; vol. 1, p. 51.

2 P. 53.

»P.61.

HERBERT SPENCER

m

be known; since their implications are at variance with as-
sumptions universally accepted.” 1 At the age of forty he
tried to read the Iliad, but “after reading some six books I
felt what a task it would be to go on — felt that I would rather
give a large sum than read to the end.” 2 Collier, one of his
secretaries, tells us that Spencer never finished any book of
science . 3 Even in his favorite fields he received no systematic
instruction. He burnt his fingers and achieved a few ex-
plosions in chemistry; he browsed entomologically among the
bugs about school and home; and he learned something about
strata and fossils in his later work as a civil engineer ; for the
rest he picked his science casually as he went along. Until he
was thirty he had no thought at all of philosophy . 4 Then he
read Lewes, and tried to pass on to Kant ; but finding, at the
outset, that Kant considered space and time to be forms of
sense-perception rather than objective things, he decided that
Kant was a dunce, and threw the book away . 5 His secretary
tells us that Spencer composed his first book, Social Stat-
ics, “having read no other ethical treatise than an old and
now forgotten book by Jonathan Dymond.” He wrote his
Psychology after reading only Hume, Mansel and Reid; his
Biology after reading only Carpenter’s Comparative Physi-
ology (and not the Origin of Species ) ; his Sociology without
reading Comte or Tylor; hjs Ethics without reading Kant or
Mill or any other moralist than Sedgwick . 6 What a contrast
to the intensive and relentless education of John Stuart Mill!

Where, then, did he find those myriad facts with which he
propped up his thousand arguments? He “picked them up,”
for the most part, by direct observation rather than by read-
ing. “His curiosity was ever awake, and he was continually
directing the attention of his companion to some notable

IP. vii.

2 P. 300.

8 Appendix to Royce’s Herbert Spencer.

*Autob. t i, 438.

»Pp. 289, 291. '

8 Collier, in Royce, 210 f .

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THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY

phenomenon . . . until then seen by his eyes alone.” At the
Athenaeum Club he pumped Huxley and his other friends
almost dry of their expert knowledge ; and he ran through the
periodicals at the Club as he had run through those that
passed through his father’s hands for the Philosophical
Society at Derby, “lynx-eyed for every fact that was grist to
his mill.” 1 Having determined what he wanted to do, and
having found the central idea, evolution, about which all his
work would turn, his brain became a magnet for relevant
material, and the unprecedented orderliness of his thought
classified the material almost automatically as it came. No
wonder the proletaire and the business man heard him gladly ;
here was just such a mind as their own — a stranger to book-
learning, innocent of “culture” and yet endowed with the
natural, matter-of-fact knowledge of the man who learns as
he works and lives.

For he was working for his living: and his profession in-
tensified the practical tendency of his thought. He was sur-
veyor, supervisor and designer of railway lines and bridges,
and in general an engineer. He dripped inventions at every
turn; they all failed, but he looked back upon them, in his
Autobiography , with the fondness of a father for a wayward
son; he sprinkled his reminiscent pages with patent salt-
cellars, jugs, candle-extinguishers, invalid-chairs, and the like.
As most of us do in youth, he invented new diets too ; for a
time he was vegetarian; but he abandoned it when he saw a
fellow-vegetarian develop anemia, and himself losing strength ;
“I found that I had to rewrite what I had written during the
time I was a vegetarian, because it was so wanting in vigor.” 2
He was ready in those days to give everything a trial ; he even
thought of migrating to New Zealand, forgetting that a young
country has no use for philosophers. It was characteristic
of him that he made parallel lists of reasons for and against
the move, giving each reason a numerical value. The sums

i Ibid.

zAutob., i, 401

HERBERT SPENCER 389

being 110 points for remaining in England and 301 for going,
he remained.

His character had the defects of its virtues. He paid for
his resolute realism and practical sense by missing the spirit
and zest of poetry and art. The only poetical touch in his
twenty volumes was due to a printer who made Spencer speak
of “the daily versification of scientific predictions.” He had
a fine persistence whose other side was an opinionated ob-
stinacy; he could sweep the entire universe for proofs of his
hypotheses, but he could not see with any insight another’s
point of view; he had the egotism that bears up the non-
conformer, and he could not carry his greatness without some
conceit. He had the limitations of the pioneer: a dogmatic
narrowness accompanying a courageous candor and an intense
originality; sternly resisting all flattery, rejecting proffered
governmental honors, and pursuing his painful work for forty
years in chronic ill-health and modest seclusion; and yet
marked, by some phrenologist who gained access to him —
“Self-esteem very large.” 1 The son and grandson of
teachers, he wielded the ferule in his books, and struck a high
didactic tone. “I am never puzzled,” he tells us. 2 His
solitary bachelor life left him lacking in the warmly human
qualities, though he could be indignantly humane. He had
an affair with that great Englishman, George Eliot, but she
had too much intellect to please him. 3 He lacked humor, and
had no subtlety or nuances in his style. When he lost at his
favorite game of billiards, he denounced his opponent for
devoting so much time to such a game as to have become an
expert in it. In his Autobiography he writes reviews of his
own early books, to show how it should have been done. 4

Apparently the magnitude of his task compelled him to
look upon life with more seriousness than it deserves. “I was
at the Fete of St. Cloud on Sunday,” he writes from Paris;

1 P. 228.

2 P. 464.

8 1, 457-62; II, 44.

4 1, 415, 546.

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THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY

“and was much amused by the juvenility of the adults. The
French never entirely cease to be boys ; I saw gray-haired
people riding on whirligigs such as we have at our own fairs.” 1
He was so busy analyzing and describing life that he had no
time to live it. After seeing Niagara Falls he jotted down
in his diary : “Much what I had expected.” 2 He describes
the most ordinary incidents with the most magnificent ped-
antry— as when he tells us of the only time he ever swore . 8
He suffered no crises, felt no romance (if his memoirs record
him well) ; he had some intimacies, but he writes of them
almost mathematically ; he plots the curves of his tepid friend-
ships without any uplifting touch of passion. A friend said
of himself that he could not write well when dictating to a
young woman stenographer; Spencer said that it did not
bother him at all. His secretary says, “The passionless thin
lips told of a total lack of sensuality, and the light eyes be-
trayed a lack of emotional depth .” 4 Hence the monot-
onous levelness of his style : he never soars, and needs no
exclamation-points; in a romantic century he stands like a
sculptured lesson in dignity and reserve.

He had an exceptionally logical mind; he marshalled his
a prioris and his a posterioris with the precision of a chess
player. He is the clearest expositor of complex subjects that
modern history can show; he wrote of difficult problems in
terms so lucid that for a generation all the world was in-
terested in philosophy. “It has been remarked,” he says, “that
I have an unusual faculty of exposition — set forth my data
and reasonings and conclusions with a clearness and coherence
not common.” B He loved spacious generalizations, and made
his works interesting rather with his hypotheses than with his
proofs. Huxley said that Spencer’s idea of a tragedy was

1 1, 533.

2 JJj 465.

s Tyndall once said of him what a much better fellow he would be if he
had a good swear now and again. — Elliott, Herbert Spencer, p. 61.

4 Royce, 188.

« Autob., ii, 511.

HERBERT SPENCER

391

a theory killed by a fact; 1 and there were so many theories
in Spencer’s mind that he was bound to have a tragedy every
day or two. Huxley, struck by the feeble and undecided
gait of Buckle, said of him to Spencer: “Ah, I see the
kind of man; he is top-heavy.” “Buckle,” Spencer adds,
“had taken in a much larger quantity of matter than he
could organize.” 2 With Spencer it was the other way : he
organized much more than he had taken in. He was all for
coordination and synthesis ; he depreciated Carlyle for lack-
ing a similar turn. The fondness for order became in him
an enslaving passion; a brilliant generalization over-mastered
him. But the world was calling for a mind like his ; one who
could transform the wilderness of facts with sunlit clarity
into civilized meaning; and the service which Spencer per-
formed for his generation entitled him to the failings that
made him human. If he has been pictured here rather
frankly, it is because we love a great man better when we
know his faults, and suspiciously dislike him when he shines in
unmitigated perfection.

“Up to this date,” wrote Spencer at forty, “my life
might fitly have been characterized as miscellaneous.” 8
Seldom has a philosopher’s career shown such desultory vacil-
lation. “About this time” (age twenty-three) “my attention
turned to the construction of watches.” 4 But gradually he
found his field, and tilled it with honest husbandry. As early
as 1842 he wrote, for the Non-conformist (note the medium
he chose), some letters on “The Proper Sphere of Govern-
ment,” which contained his later laissez-faire philosophy in
ovo. Six years later he dropped engineering to edit The
Economist. At the age of thirty, when he spoke disparag-
ingly of Jonathan Dymond’s- Essays on the Principles of
Morality, and his father challenged him to do as well with

1 1 , 467 .

2 II, 4.

811 , 67 .

* I. 279.

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THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY

such a subject, he took the dare, and wrote his Social Statics .
It had only a small sale, but it won him access to the maga-
zines. In 1852 his essay on “The Theory of Population”
(one of the many instances of Malthus’ influence on the
thought of the nineteenth century) suggested that the strug-
gle for existence leads to a survival of the fittest, and coined
those historic phrases. In the same year his essay on “The
Development Hypothesis” met the trite objection — that the
origin of new species by progressive modification of older ones
had never been seen — by pointing out that the same argument
told much more strongly against the theory of the “special
creation” of new species by God ; and it went on to show that
the development of new species was no more marvelous or
incredible than the development of a man from ovum and
sperm, or of a plant from a seed. In 1855 his second book,
The Principles of Psychology , undertook to trace the evolu-
tion of mind. Then, in 1857, came an essay on “Progress,
Its Law and Cause,” which took up Von Baer’s idea of the
growth of all living forms from homogeneous beginnings to
heterogeneous developments, and lifted it into a general prin-
ciple of history and progress. In short Spencer had grown
with the spirit of his age, and was ready now to become the
philosopher of universal evolution.

When, in 1858, he was revising his essays for collective pub-
lication, he was struck by the unity and sequence of the ideas
he had expressed; and the notion came to him, like a burst
of sunlight through opened doors, that the theory of evolution
might be applied in every science as well as in biology; that
it could explain not only species and genera but planets and
strata, social and political history, moral and esthetic con-
ceptions. He was fired with the thought of a series of works
in which he would show the evolution of matter and mind from
nebula to man, and from savage to Shakespeare. But he
almost despaired when he thought of his nearly forty years.
How could one man, so old, and an invalid, traverse all the
sphere of human knowledge before his death? Only three

HERBERT SPENCER

years back he had had a complete break-down; for eighteen
months he had been incapacitated, broken in mind and
courage, wandering aimlessly and hopelessly from place to
place. The consciousness of his latent powers made his weak-
ness a bitter thing to him. He knew that he would never be
quite healthy again, and that he could not bear mental work
for more than an hour at a time. Never was a man so handi-
capped for the work he chose, and never did a man choose, so
late in life, so great a work.

He was poor. He had not given much thought to getting a
living. “I don’t mean to get on,” he said; “I don’t think
getting on is worth the bother.” 1 He had resigned the editor-
ship of The Economist on receiving $2,500 as bequest from an
uncle; but his idleness had consumed this gift. It occurred
to him now that he might seek advance subscriptions for his
intended volumes, and so live from hand to mouth, and pay
his way as he went. He prepared an outline, and submitted it
to Huxley, Lewes, and other friends ; they secured him an im-
posing list of initial subscribers whose names might adorn his
prospectus : Kingsley, Lyell, Hooker, Tyndall, Buckle, Froude,
Bain, Herschel and others. Published in 1860, this prospectus
brought 440 subscriptions from Europe, and 200 from Amer-
ica; the total promising a modest $1,500 a year. Spencer was
satisfied, and set to work with a will.

But after the publication of First Principles, in 1862, many
subscribers withdrew their names because of the famous “Part
One,” which, attempting to reconcile science and religion,
offended bishops and pundits alike. The way of the peace-
maker is hard. First Principles and The Origin of Species
became the center of a great Battle of the Books, in which
Huxley served as generalissimo for the forces of Darwinism
and agnosticism. For a time the evolutionists were severely
ostracised by respectable people; they were denounced as im-
moral monsters, and it was thought good form to insult them
publicly. Spencer’s subscribers fell away with every instal-
i J. A. Thomson, Herbert Spencer, p. 71.

994 THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY

ment, and many defaulted on payments due for instalments
received. Spencer went on as long as he could, paying out
of his pocket the deficit which every issue involved. At last
his funds and his courage were exhausted, and he issued to the
remaining subscribers an announcement that he could no
longer continue his work.

Then came one of the encouraging incidents of history.
Spencer’s greatest rival, who had held the field of English
philosophy before the publication of First Principles, and
now saw himself superseded by the philosopher of evolution,
wrote to him as follows, on February 4, 1866:

Dear Sir:

On arriving here last week, I found the December livraison
of your Biology, and I need hardly say how much I regretted
the announcement in the paper annexed to it. ... I pro-
pose that you should write the next of your treatises, and
that I should guarantee the publisher against loss. ... I
beg that you will not consider this proposal in the light of a
personal favor, though even if it were I should still hope
to be permitted to offer it. But it is nothing of the kind —
it is a simple proposal of cooperation for an important pub-
lic purpose, for which you give your labor and have given
your health. I am, Dear Sir,

Very truly yours,

J. S. Mill. 1

Spencer courteously refused; but Mill went out among his
friends and persuaded several of them to subscribe for 250
copies each. Spencer again objected, and could not be
moved. Then suddenly came a letter from Prof. Youmans,
saying that Spencer’s American admirers had bought, in his
name, $7000 of public securities, of which the interest of
dividends were to go to him. This time he yielded. The
spirit of the gift renewed his inspiration; he resumed his task;
and for forty years he kept his shoulder to the wheel, until
all the Synthetic Philosophy had arrived safely into print.

"i-Autob., ii, 156.

HERBERT SPENCER 395

This triumph of mind and will over illness and a thousand ob-
stacles is one of the sunny spots in the book of man.

HI. FIRST PRINCIPLES

1 . The Unknowable

“We too often forget,” says Spencer at the outset, “that
not only is there ‘a soul of goodness in things evil/ hut
generally also a soul of truth in things erroneous.” He pro-
poses, therefore, to examine religious ideas, with a view to
finding that core of truth which under the changing form of
many faiths, has given to religion its persistent power over
the human soul.

What he finds at once is that every theory of the origin of
the universe drives us into inconceivabilities. The atheist
tries to think of a self-existent world, uncaused and without
beginning ; but we cannot conceive of anything beginningless
or uncaused. The theist merely puts back the difficulty
by a step ; and to the theologian who says, “God^ made the
world,” the child’s unanswerable query comes, “Who made
God?” All ultimate religious ideas are logically incon-
ceivable.

All ultimate scientific ideas are equally beyond rational con-
ception. What is matter? We reduce it to atoms, and then
find ourselves forced to divide the atom as we had divided the
molecule ; we are driven into the dilemma that matter is in-
finitely divisible, — which is inconceivable ; or that there is a
limit to its divisibility, — which also is inconceivable. So with
the divisibility of space and time ; both of these are ultimately
irrational ideas. Motion is wrapped in a triple obscurity,
since it involves matter changing, in time, its position in
space. When we analyze matter resolutely we find nothing
at last but. force — a force impressed upon our organs of
sense, or a force resisting our organs of action ; and who shall
tell us what force is? Turn from physics to psychology, and

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THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY

we come upon mind and consciousness: and here are greater
puzzles than before. “Ultimate scientific ideas,” then, “are
all representations of realities that cannot be comprehended.
... In all directions the scientist’s investigations bring him
face to face with an insoluble enigma ; and he ever more clearly
perceives it to be an insoluble enigma. He learns at once
the greatness and the littleness of the human intellect — its
power in dealing with all that comes within the range of ex-
perience, its impotence in dealing with all that transcends
experience. He, more than any other, truly knows that in
its ultimate nature nothing can be known .” 1 The only
honest philosophy, to use Huxley’s word, is agnosticism.

The common cause of these obscurities is the relativity of
all knowledge. “Thinking being relating, no thought can ex-
press more than relations. . . . Intellect being framed simply
by and for converse with phenomena, involves us in nonsense
when we try to use it for anything beyond phenomena.” 2
And yet the relative and phenomenal imply by their names
and natures something beyond them, something ultimate and
absolute. “On watching our thoughts we see how impossible
it is to get rid of the consciousness of an Actuality lying
behind Appearances, and how from this impossibility results
our indestructible belief in that Actuality.” 3 But what that
Actuality is we cannot know.

From this point of view the reconciliation of science and
religions is no longer very difficult. “Truth generally lies
in the coordination of antagonistic opinions.” 4 Let science
admit that its “laws” apply only to phenomena and the rela-
tive; let religion admit that its theology is a rationalizing
myth for a belief that defies conception. Let religion cease
to picture the Absolute as a magnified man; much worse, as
a cruel and blood-thirsty and treacherous monster, afflicted

ij First Principles. New York, 1910; p. 56.

2 Pp. 107-108. This unconsciously 4 follows Kant, and succinctly anticipates
Bergson.

» P. 83.

4 Awtob., ii, 16.

HERBERT SPENCER

397

with “a love of adulation such as would he despised in a
human being.” 1 Let science cease to deny, deity, or to take
materialism for granted. Mind and matter are, equally,
relative phenomena, the double effect of an ultimate cause
whose nature must remain unknown. The recognition of this
Inscrutable Power is the core of truth in every religion, and
the beginning of all philosophy.

Evolution

Having indicated the unknowable, philosophy surrenders
it, and turns its face to what can be known. Metaphysics is
a mirage : as Michelet put it, it is “the art of befuddling one’s
self methodically.” The proper field and function of phi-
losophy lies in the summation and unification of the results
of science. “Knowledge of the lowest kind is un-unified
knowledge; science is partially-unified knowledge; philosophy
is completely-unified knowledge.” s Such complete unifica-
tion requires a broad and universal principle that will include
all experience, and will describe the essential features of all
knowledge. Is there a principle of this kind?

We may perhaps approach such a principle by trying to
unify the highest generalizations of physics. These are the
indestructibility of matter, the conservation of energy, the
continuity of motion, the persistence of relations among forces
(i. e., the inviolability of natural law), the transformability
and equivalence of forces (even of mental and physical
forces), and the rhythm of motion. This last generalization,
not usually recognized, needs only to be pointed out. All
nature is rhythmical, from the pulsations of heat to the vibra-
tions of violin strings ; from the undulations of light, heat and
sound to the tides of the sea; from the periodicities of sex
to the periodicities of planets and comets and stars ; from the
alternation of night and day to the succession of the seasons,

IK P.,103.

2P. 119.

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THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY

and perhaps to the rhythms of climatic change; from the
oscillations of molecules to the rise and fall of nations and
the birth and death of stars.

All these “laws of the knowable” are reducible (by an
analysis which must not here be followed in detail) to the final
law of the persistence of force. But there is something static
and inert about this principle ; it does not so much as hint
at the secret of life. What is the dynamic principle of
reality? What is the formula of the growth and decay of
all things? It must be a formula of evolution and dissolu-
tion, for “an entire history of anything must include its
appearance out of the imperceptible and its disappearance
into the imperceptible .” 1

So Spencer offers us his famous formula of evolution, which
made the intellect of Europe gasp for breath, and required
ten volumes and forty years for its explanation. “Evolution
is an integration of matter and a concomitant dissipation of
motion ; during which the matter passes from an indefinite, in-
coherent homogeneity to a definite, coherent heterogeneity;
and during which the retained motion undergoes a -parallel-
transformation.” 2 What does this mean?

The growth of planets out of nebulae; the formation of
oceans and mountains on the earth; the metabolism of elements
by plants, and of animal tissues by men; the development
of the heart in the embryo, and the fusion of bones after
hirth; the unification of sensations and memories into knowl-
edge and thought, and of knowledge into science and phi-
losophy; the development of families into clans and gentes
and cities and states and alliances and the “federation of the
world”: here is the integration of matter, — the aggregation
of separate items into masses and groups and wholes. Such
integration of course involves a lessening of motion in the parts,
as the growing power of the state lessens the freedom of the
individual ; but at the same time it gives to the parts an inter-

i P. 253.

2P. 367.

HERBERT SPENCER

dependence, a protective tissue of relationships, which consti-
tute “coherence” and promote corporate survival. The pro-
cess brings, too, a greater definiteness of forms and func-
tions : the nebula is shapeless, nebulous ; and yet out of it come
the elliptical regularity of the planets, the sharp lines of
mountain-chains, the specific form and character of organisms
and organs, the division of labor and specialization of function
in physiological and political structures, etc. And the parts
of this integrating whole become not merely definite but
diverse, heterogeneous in nature and operation. The prime-
val nebula is homogeneous — i. e., it consists of parts that are
alike; but soon it is differentiated into gases and liquids and
solids; the earth becomes here green with grass, there white
with mountain-tops, or blue with the multitudinous, sea;
evolving life begets, out of a relatively homogeneous proto-
plasm, the varied organs of nutrition, reproduction, locomo-
tion, and perception; a simple language fills whole continents
with its multiplying dialects; a single science breeds a hun-
dred, and the folk-lore of a nation flowers into a thousand
forms of literary art; individuality grows, character stands
out uniquely, and every race and people develops its peculiar
genius. Integration and heterogeneity, aggregation of parts
into ever larger wholes and differentiation of parts into ever
more varied forms : these are the foci of the orbit of evolution.
Whatever passes from diffusion to integration and unity, and
from a homogeneous simplicity to a differentiated complexity
(cf. America, 1600-1900), is in the flow of evolution; what-
ever is returning from integration to diffusion, and from
complexity to simplicity (cf. Europe 200-600 a. d.), is caught
in the ebb of dissolution.

Not content with this synthetic formula, Spencer endeavors
to show how it follows by inevitable necessity from the natural
operation of mechanical forces. There is, first, a certain “In-
stability of the Homogeneous” : i. e., similar parts cannot long
remain similar because they are unevenly subjected to external
forces ; outer parts, e. g., are sooner attacked, like coast-line

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THE STORY OP PHILOSOPHY

towns in war; and the variety of occupations moulds simi-
lar men into the varied embodiments of a hundred profes-
sions and trades. There is, again, a “Multiplication of
Effects”: one cause may produce a vast variety of results,
and help to differentiate the world; a word amiss, like Marie
Antoinette’s, or an altered telegram at Ems, or a wind at
Salamis, may play an endless role in history. And there is
the law of “Segregation”: the parts of a relatively homo-
geneous whole, being driven separate into different areas, are
shaped by diverse environments into dissimilar products, — *
as . the English become Americans, or Canadians, or Aus-
tralians, according to the genius of the place. In these many
ways the forces of nature build the variety of this evolving
world.

But finally, and inescapably, comes “Equilibration.”
Every motion, being motion under resistance, must sooner or
later come to an end ; every rhythmic oscillation (unless exter-
nally reinforced) suffers some loss of rate and amplitude.
The planets ride through a lesser orbit, or will ride, than once
they rode; the sun will shine less warmly and brightly as the
centuries pass away; the friction of the tides will retard the
rotation of the earth. This globe, that throbs and murmurs
with a million motions, and luxuriates into a million forms of
riotously breeding life, will some day move more leisurely in
its orbit and its parts; the blood will run cooler and more
slowly in our desiccated veins ; we shall not hurry any more ;
like dying races, we shall think of heaven in terms of rest and
not of life; we shall dream of Nirvana. Gradually, and then
rapidly, equilibration will become dissolution, the unhappy
epilogue of evolution. Societies will disintegrate, masses will
migrate, cities will fade into the dark hinterland of peasant
life ; no government will be strong enough to hold the loosened
parts together ; social order will cease to be even remembered.
And in the individual too, integration will give way to disrup-
tion; and that coordination which is life will pass into that
diffuse disorder which is death. The earth will be a chaotic

HERBERT SPENCER

401

theatre of decay, a gloomy drama of energy in irreversible
degradation; and it will itself be resolved into the dust
and nebula from which it came. The cycle of evolution and
dissolution will be complete. The cycle will begin again, and
endless times again; but always this will be the denouement.
Memento mori is written upon the face of life ; and every birth
is a prelude to decay and death.

First Principles is a magnificent drama, telling with almost
classic calm the story of the rise and fall, the evolution and
dissolution, of planets and life and man; hut it is a tragic
drama, for which the fittest epilogue is Hamlet’s word — “The
rest is silence.” Is there any wonder that men and women
nurtured on faith and hope rebelled against this summary of
existence? We know that we must die; but as it is a matter
that will take care of itself, we prefer to think of life. There
was in Spencer an almost Schopenhauerian sense of the
futility of human effort. At the end of his triumphant career
he expressed his feeling that life was not worth living. He
had the philosopher’s disease of seeing so far ahead that all
the little pleasant shapes and colors of existence passed under
his nose unseen.

He knew that people would not relish a philosophy whose
last word was not God and heaven, but equilibration and dis-
solution; and in concluding this First Part he defended with
unusual eloquence and fervor his right to speak the dark
truths that he saw.

Whoever hesitates to utter that which he thinks the high-
est truth, lest it should be too much in advance of the time,
may reassure himself by looking at his acts from an imper-
sonal point of view. Let him remember that opinion is the
agency through which character adapts external arrange-
ments to itself, and that his opinion rightly forms part of
this agency — is a unit of force constituting, with other such
mits, the general power which works out social changes;
and he will perceive that he may properly give utterance to

402 THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY

his innermost conviction ; leaving it to produce what effect
it may. It is not for nothing that he has in him these sym-
pathies with some principles and repugnance to others. He,
with all his capacities, and aspirations, and beliefs, is not an
accident but a product of the time* While he is a descend-
ant of the past he is a parent of the future; and his thoughts
are as children born to him, which he may not carelessly let
die. Like every other man he may properly consider him-
self as one of the myriad agencies through whom works the
Unknown Cause; and when the Unknown Cause produces in
him a certain belief, he is thereby authorized to profess and
act out that belief. . . . Not as adventitious therefore will
the wise man regard the faith that is in him. The highest
truth he sees he will fearlessly utter; knowing. that, let what
may come of it, he is thus playing his right part in the world
— knowing that if he can effect the change he aims at — well;
if not — well also; though not so well.

xv. biology: the evolution of life

The second and third volumes of the Synthetic Philosophy
appeared in 1872 under the title of Principles of Biology.
They revealed the natural limitations of a philosopher in-
vading a specialist’s field; but they atoned for errors or
detail by illuminating generalizations that gave a new unity
and intelligibility to vast areas of biological fact.

Spencer begins with a famous definition: “Life is the con-
tinuous adjustment of internal relations to external rela-
tions.” 1 The completeness; of life depends on the complete-
ness of this correspondence; and life is perfect when the cor-
respondence is perfect. The correspondence is not a merely
passive adaptation; what distinguishes life is the adjustment
of internal relations in anticipation of a change in ex-
ternal relations, as when an animal crouches to avoid a blow,
or a man makes a fire to warm his food. The defect of
the definition lies not merely in its tendency to neglect the

i Principles of Biology ; New York, 1910; 1, 99.

HERBERT SPENCER

40 $

remoulding activity of the organism upon the environment^
but in its failure to explain what is that subtle power whereby
an organism is enabled to make these prophetic adjustments
that characterize vitality. In a chapter added to later edi-
tions, Spencer was forced to discuss “The Dynamic Element
in Life,” and to admit that his definition had not really re-
vealed the nature of life. “We are obliged to confess that
Life in its essence cannot be conceived in physico-chemical
terms.” 1 He did not realize how damaging such an admis-
sion was to the unity and completeness of his system.

As Spencer sees in the life of the individual an adjustment
of internal to external relations, so he sees in the life of the
species a remarkable adjustment of reproductive fertility tc*
the conditions of its habitat. Reproduction arises originally
ais a readaptation of the nutritive surface to the nourished
mass; the growth of an amoeba, for example, involves an.
increase of mass much more rapid than the increase in the
surface through which the mass must get its nourishment
Division, budding, spore-formation, and sexual reproduction
have this in common, that the ratio of mass to surface is re-
duced, and the nutritive balance is restored. Hence the
growth of the individual organism beyond a certain point is
dangerous; and normally growth gives way, after a time, to
reproduction.

On the average, growth varies inversely with the rate of
energy-expenditure ; and the rate of reproduction varies
inversely with the degree of growth. “It is well known to
breeders that if a filly is allowed to bear a foal, she is thereby
prevented from reaching her proper size. ... As a converse
fact, castrated animals, as capons and notably cats, often
become larger than their unmutilated associates.” 2 The rate
of reproduction tends to fall as the development and capa-
bility of the individual progress. “When, from lowness of
organization, the ability to contend with external dangers

H,120.

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is small, there must be great fertility to compensate for the
consequent mortality ; otherwise the race must die out. When,
on the contrary, high endowments give much capacity for
self-preservation, a correspondingly low degree of fertility is
requisite,” lest the rate of multiplication should outrun the
supply of food . 1 In general, then, there is an opposition
of individuation and genesis, or individual development and
fertility. The rule holds for groups and species more regu-
larly than for individuals : the more highly developed the
species or the group, the lower will its birth-rate be. But
it holds for individuals too, on the average. For example,
intellectual development seems hostile to fertility. “Where
exceptional fertility exists, there is sluggishness of mind, and
where there has been, during education, excessive expenditure
in mental action, there frequently follows a complete or
partial infertility. Hence the particular kind of further
evolution which Man is hereafter to undergo is one which,
more than any other, may be expected to cause a decline in
his power of reproduction.” 2 * Philosophers are notorious for
shirking parentage. In woman, on the other hand, the arrival
of motherhood normally brings a diminution of intellectual
activity ; 8 and perhaps her shorter adolescence is due to her
earlier sacrifice to reproduction.

Despite this approximate adaptation of birth-rate to the
needs of group survival, the adaptation is never complete, and
Malthus was right in his general principle that population
tends to outrun the means of subsistence. “From the begin-
ning this pressure of population has been the proximate cause
of progress. It produced the original diffusion of the race.
It compelled men to abandon predatory habits and take to
agriculture. It led to the clearing of the earth’s surface.
It forced men into the social state, . . . and developed the
social sentiments. It has stimulated to progressive improve-*

1 II, 421.

2 II, 530.

8 dwtob., i, 62.

HERBERT SPENCER

405

merits in production, and to increased skill and intelligence.” 1
ft is the chief cause of that struggle for existence through
which the fittest are enabled to survive, and through winch the
level of the race is raised.

Whether the arrival of the fittest is due chiefly to sponta-
neous favorable variations, or to the partial inheritance of
characters or capacities repeatedly acquired by successive
generations, is a question on which Spencer took no dogmatic
stand; he accepted Darwin’s theory gladly, but felt that there
were facts which it could not explain, and which compelled
a modified acceptance of Lamarckian views. He defended
Lamarck with fine vigor in his controversy with Weismann,
and pointed out certain defects in the Darwinian theory. In
those days Spencer stood almost alone on the side of Lamarck ;
it is of some interest to note that today the neo-Lamarckians
include descendants of Darwin, while the greatest contem-
porary English biologist gives it as the view of present-day
students of genetics that Darwin’s particular theory (not, of
course the general theory) of evolution must be abandoned. 2

y. PSYCHOLOGY : THE EVOLUTION OP MIND

The two volumes on The Principles of Psychology (1873)
are the weakest links in Spencer’s chain. There had been an
earlier volume on the subject (1855), a youthfully vigorous
defense of materialism and determinism ; but age and thought
revised this into a milder form, and padded it out with hun-
dreds of pages of painstaking but unilluminating analysis.
Here, even more than elsewhere, Spencer is rich in theories
and poor in proofs. He has a theory of the origin of nerves
out of intercellular connective tissue; and a theory of the
genesis of instinct by the compounding of reflexes and the
transmission of acquired characters ; and a theory of the origin
®f mental categories out of the experience of the race; and
i Biology, ii, 636.

2 Cf., address of Sir Wm, Bateson before the American Association for
the Advancement of Science (Toronto, Dec. 28, 1921), in Science , Jan. 20, 192?.

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THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY

a theory of “transfigured realism”; 1 and a hundred other
theories that have all the obfuscating power of metaphysics
rather than the clarifying virtue of a matter-of-fact psy-
chology. In these volumes we leave realistic England and
go “back to Kant.”

What strikes us at once is that for the first time in the
history of psychology, we get here a resolutely evolutionist
point of view, an attempt at genetic explanations, an effort
to trace the bewildering complexities of thought down to the
simplest of nervous operations, and finally to the motions of
matter. It is true that this effort fails; but who has ever
succeeded in such an attempt? Spencer sets out with a
magnificent program for the unveiling of the processes
whereby consciousness has been evolved ; in the end he is com-
pelled to posit consciousness everywhere, 2 in order to evolve
it. He insists that there has been one continuous evolution
from nebula to mind, and at last confesses that matter is
known only through mind. Perhaps the most significant
paragraphs in these volumes are those in which the materialist
philosophy is abandoned:

Can the oscillation of a. molecule be represented in con-
sciousness side by side with a nervous shock, and the two be
recognized as one? No effort enables us to assimilate them.
That a unit of feeling has nothing in common with a unit of
motion, becomes more than ever manifest when we bring the
two into juxtaposition. And the immediate verdict of con-
sciousness thus given, might be analytically justified; . . .
for it might be shown that the conception of an oscillating
molecule is built out of many units of feeling.” (I. e., our
knowledge of matter is built up out of units of mind — sensa-
tions and memories and ideas). “. . . Were we compelled
to choose between the alternatives of translating mental
phenomena into physical phenomena, or of translating physi-

i Spencer means by this that although the objects of experience may very
well be transfigured by perception, and be quite other than they seem, they
have an existence which does not all depend upon perceiving them. — II, 494“
zAutob., ii, 549.

HERBERT SPENCER

407

cal phenomena Into mental phenomena, the latter alternative
would seem the more acceptable of the two. 1

Nevertheless there is of course an evolution of mind; a
development of modes of response from simple to compound
to complex, from reflex to tropism to instinct, through memory
and imagination to intellect and reason. To the reader who
can pass alive through these 1400 pages of physiological and
psychological analysis there will come an overwhelming sense
of the continuity of life and the continuity of mind; he will
see, as on. a retarded cinematograph, the formation of nerves,
the development of adaptive reflexes and instincts, and the
production of consciousness and thought through the clash
of conflicting impulses. “Intelligence has neither distinct
grades nor is it constituted by faculties that are truly inde-
pendent, but its highest manifestations are the effects of a
complication that has arisen by insensible steps out of the
simplest elements.” 2 There is no hiatus between instinct and
reason ; each is an adjustment of inner relations to outer rela-
tions, and the only difference is one of degree, in so far as the
relations responded to by instinct are comparatively stereo-
typed and simple, while those met by reason are comparatively
novel and complex. A rational action is simply an instinctive
response which has survived in a struggle with other instinc-
tive responses aroused by a situation ; “deliberation” is merely
the internecine strife of rival impulses. 8 At bottom, reason
and instinct, mind and life, are one.

Will is an abstract term which we give to the sum of our
active impulses, and a volition is the natural flow of an un-
impeded idea into action. 4 An idea is the first stage of an
action, an action is the last stage of an idea. Similarly, an
emotion is the first stage of an instinctive action, and the ex-
pression of the emotion is a useful prelude to the completed

1 Principles of Psychology , New York, 1910; i, 158-9.

2 I, 388.

a I, 453 -5.

4 1, 490-7,

408

THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY

response ; the baring of the teeth in anger gives a substantial
hint of that tearing of the enemy to pieces which used to be
the natural termination of such a beginning. 1 “Forms of
thought” like the perception of space and time, or the notions
of quantity and cause, which Kant supposed innate, are
merely instinctive ways of thinking; and as instincts are habits
acquired by the race but native to the individual, so these
categories are mental habits slowly acquired in the course of
evolution, and now part of our intellectual heritage. 2 All
these age-long puzzles of psychology can be explained by “the
inheritance of continually-accumulating modifications.” 3 —
It is of course just this all-pervading assumption that makes
so much of these laborious volumes questionable, and perhaps
vain.

VI. SOCIOLOGY : THE EVOLUTION OF SOCIETY

With sociology the verdict is quite different. These stout
volumes, whose publication ranged over twenty years, are
Spencer’s masterpiece: they cover his favorite field, and show
him at his best in suggestive generalization and political
philosophy. From his first book, Social Statics, to the last
fascicle of The Principles of Sociology, over a stretch of
almost half a century, his interest is predominantly in the
problems of economics and government; he begins and ends,
like Plato, with discourses on moral and political justice. No
man, not even Comte (founder of the science and maker of the
word) , has done so much for sociology.

In a popular introductory volume, The Study of Sociology
(1873), Spencer argues eloquently for the recognition and
development of the new science. If determinism is correct in
psychology, there must be regularities of cause and effect in
social phenomena; and a thorough student of man and society
will not be content with a merely chronological history, Kira

il, 482 f ; ii, 540 f.

2 1, 466.

• I, 491.

HERBERT SPENCER

409

Livy’s, nor with a biographical history like Carlyle’s ; he will
look in human history for those general lines of development,
those causal sequences, those illuminating correlations, which
transform the wilderness of facts into the chart of science.
What biography is to anthropology, history is to sociology. 1
Of course there are a thousand obstacles that the study of
society must yet overcome before it can deserve the name of
science. 2 The young study is harassed by a multitude of
prejudices — personal, educational, theological, economic, po-
litical, national, religious ; and by the ready omniscience of
the uninformed. “There is a story of a Frenchman who, hav-
ing been three weeks here, proposed to write a book on Eng-
land; who, after three months, found that he was not quite
ready; and who, after three years, concluded that he knew
nothing about it.” 3 Such a man was ripe to begin the study
of sociology. Men prepare themselves with life-long study
before becoming authorities in physics or chemistry or
biology ; but in the field of social and political affairs every
grocer’s boy is an expert, knows the solution, and demands to
be heard.

Spencer’s own preparation, in this case, was a model of
intellectual conscience. He employed three secretaries to
gather data for him, and to classify the data in parallel col-
umns giving the domestic, ecclesiastical, professional, political,
and industrial institutions of every significant people. At
his own expense he published these collections in eight large
volumes, so that other students might verify or modify his
conclusions ; and the publication being unfinished at his death,
he left part of his little savings to complete the undertaking*
After seven years of such preparation, the first volume of
the Sociology appeared in 1876; not until 1896 was the last
one ready. When everything else of Spencer’s has become

1 The Study of Sociology, New York, 1910; p. 52.

2 The Principles of Ethics, New York, 1910; i, 464. If Spencer’s critics
had. read this passage they would not have accused him of over-rating
sociology.

s Study, 9.

^CG

THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY

a task for the antiquarian, these three volumes will still be
rich in reward for every student of society.

Nevertheless, the initial conception of the work is typical of
Spencer’s habit of rushing into generalizations. Society, he
believes, is an organism, having organs of nutrition, circula-
tion, coordination and reproduction , 1 very much as in the case
of individuals. It is true that in the individual, consciousness
m localized, while in society each of the parts retains its own
consciousness and its own will; but the centralization of gov-
ernment and authority tend to reduce the scope of this distinc-
tion. “A social organism is like an individual organism in
these essential traits : that it grows ; that while growing it be-
comes more complex; that while becoming more complex, its
parts acquire increasing mutual dependence; that its life
is immense in length compared with the lives of its component
units ; . . . that in both cases there is increasing integration
accompanied by increasing heterogeneity.” 2 Thus the devel-
opment of society liberally carries out the formula of evolu-
tion: the growing size of the political unit, from family to
state and league, the growing size of the economic unit, from
petty domestic industry to monopolies and cartels, the grow-
ing size of the population unit, from villages to towns and
cities — surely these show a process of integration; while the
division of labor, the multiplication of professions and trades,
and the growing economic interdependence of city with
country, and of nation with nation, amply illustrate the de-
velopment of coherence and differentiation.

The same principle of the integration of the heterogeneous
applies to every field of social phenomena, from religion and
government to science and art. Religion is at first the wor-
ship of a multitude of gods and spirits, more or less alike in
every nation; and the development of religion comes through
the notion of a central and omnipotent deity subordinating

i-Cf. budding with colonization, and sexual reproduction with the inter-
marriage of races.

zAutob., ii, 56.

HERBERT SPENCER

Ml

the others, and coordinating them into their hierarchy of
special roles. The first gods were probably suggested by
dreams and ghosts. 1 The word spirit was, and is, applied
equally to ghosts and gods. The primitive mind believed that
in death, or sleep, or trance, the ghost or spirit left the body;;
even in a sneeze the forces of expiration might expel the spirit,
so that a protective “God bless you !” — or its equivalent — be-
came attached to this dangerous adventure. Echoes and
reflections were sounds and sights of one’s ghost or double^
the Basuto refuses to walk by a stream, lest a crocodile should
seize his shadow and consume it. God was, at first, only “a
permanently existing ghost.” 2 Persons who had been power-
ful during their earthly lives were believed to keep their
power in their ghostly appearance. Among the Tannese the
word for god means, literally, a dead man. 3 “Jehovah” meant
“the strong one,” “the warrior” : he had been a local potentate,
perhaps, who was worshiped after his death as the “god of
hosts.” Such dangerous ghosts had to be propitiated : funeral
rites grew into worship, and all the modes of currying favor
with the earthly chief were applied to the ceremonial of
prayer and the appeasement of the gods. Ecclesiastical
revenues originated in gifts to the gods, just as state revenues
began as presents to the chief. Obeisances to kings became
prostration and prayer at the altar of the god. The deriva-
tion of the god from the dead king shows clearly in the case
of the Romans, who deified rulers before their death. In such
ancestor-worship all religion seems to have its origin. The
power of this custom may be illustrated by the story of the
chief who refused baptism because he was not satisfied with
the answer to his query as to whether he would meet his un-
baptized ancestors in heaven. 4 (Something of this belief
entered into the bravery of the Japanese in the war of 1905 ;

1 Principles of Sociology , New York, 1910; i, 286.

2 I, 296.

s I, 303.

4 I, 284, 422; Encycl. Brit., “Ancestor-worship”

THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY

412

death was made easier for them by the thought that their
ancestors were looking down upon them from the skies.)

Religion is probably the central feature in the life of primi-
tive men; existence is so precarious and humble among them
that the soul lives rather in the hope of things to come than
in the reality of things seen. In some measure, supernatural
religion is a concomitant of militarist societies; as war gives
way to industry, thought turns from death to life, and life
runs out of the grooves of reverent authority into the open
road of initiative and freedom. Indeed, the most far-reaching
change that has taken place in all the history of western
society is the gradual replacement of a military by an in-
dustrial regime. Students of the state habitually classify
societies according as their governments are monarchical,
aristocratic, or democratic; but these are superficial distinc-
tions ; the great dividing line is that which separates militant
from industrial societies, nations that live by war from those
that live by work.

The military state is always centralized in government, and
almost always monarchical; the cooperation it inculcates is
regimental and compulsory; it encourages authoritarian reli-
gion, worshiping a warrior god ; it develops rigid class distinc-
tions and class codes ; it props up the natural domestic absolu-
tism of the male. Because the death rate in warlike societies
is high, they tend to polygamy and a low status of women.
Most states have been militant because war strengthens the
central power and makes for the subordination of all interests
to those of the state. Hence “history is little more than the
Newgate calendar of nations,” a record of robbery, treachery,
murder and national suicide. Cannibalism is the shame of
primitive societies; but some modem societies are sociophag-
ous, and enslave and consume whole peoples. Until war is
outlawed and overcome, civilization is a precarious interlude,
between catastrophies ; “the possibility of a high social . . •
state fundamentally depends on the cessation of war.” 1
HI, 663.

HERBERT SPENCER

413

The hope of such a consummation lies not so much in the
spiritual conversion of the hearts of men (for men are what
the environment makes them), as in the development of in-
dustrial societies. Industry makes for democracy and peace:
as life ceases to be dominated by war, a thousand centers
of economic development arise, and power is beneficently
spread over a large portion of the members of the group.
Since production can prosper only where initiative is free,
an industrial society breaks down those traditions of au-
thority, hierarchy, and caste, which flourish in military
states, and under which military states flourish. The occu-
pation of the soldier ceases to be held in high repute; and
patriotism becomes a love of one’s country rather than a
hatred of every other . 1 Peace at home becomes the first need
of prosperity, and as capital becomes international, and a
thousand investments cross every frontier, international peace
becomes a necessity as well. As foreign war diminishes,
domestic brutality decreases; monogamy replaces polygamy
because the life-tenure of men becomes almost equal to that
of women; the status of women rises, and the “emancipation
of women” becomes a matter of course . 2 Superstitious reli-
gions give way to liberal creeds whose focus of effort is the
amelioration and ennoblement of human life and character on
this earth. The mechanisms of industry teach men the mech-
anisms of the universe, and the notion of invariable sequences
in cause and effect; exact investigation of natural causes re-
places the easy resort to supernatural explanation . 3 History
begins to study the people at work rather than the kings at
war; it ceases to be a record of personalities and becomes the
history of great inventions and new ideas. The power of
government is lessened, and the power of productive groups
within the state increases; there is a passage “from status to
contract,” from equality in subordination to freedom in initia-

i II, 634-5.

2 1, 681.

3 II, 599.

m THE STORY OP PHILOSOPHY

tives, from compulsory cooperation to cooperation in liberty.
The contrast between the militant and the industrial types of
society is indicated by “inversion of the belief that individuals
exist for the benefit of the State into the belief that the Stat0
exists for the benefit of the individuals. 1

While protesting vigorously against the growth of an im
perialistic militarism in England, Spencer chose his country as
a type of approach to the industrial society, and pointed to
Prance and Germany as instances of the militant state.

From time to time newspapers remind us of the competi-
tion between Germany and France in their military de-
velopments. The body politic, in either case, expends most
of its energies in growths of teeth and claws — every increase
on the one side prompting an increase on the other. • • •
Recently the French Minister for Foreign Affairs, referring
to Tunis, Tongking, the Congo, and Madagascar, enlarged
on the need there had been for competing in political bur-
glaries with other nations; and held that, by taking forcible
possession of territories owned by inferior peoples, Trance
has regained a certain portion of the glory which so many
noble enterprises during previous centuries has insured her.*

. . . Hence we see why, in France, as in Germany, a scheme
of social re-organization under which each citizen, while
maintained by the community, is to labor for the community,
has obtained so wide an adhesion as to create a formidable
political body — why among the French, St. Simon, Fourier,
Proudhon, Cabet, Louis Blanc, Pierre Leroux, now by word
and now by deed, have sought to bring about some form of
communistic working and living. . . . Verification by con-
trast meets us on observing that in England, where the ex-
tent of ownership by others has been less than in France and
Germany, alike under its military form and under its civil
form, there has been less progress in sentiment and idea
towards that form of ownershop by others which socialism
implies. 2

H,575.

2 III, 596-9.

HERBERT SPENCER 4»16

As this passage indicates, Spencer believes that socialism is
a derivative of the militant and feudal type of state, and has
no natural affiliation with industry. Like militarism, social-
ism involves the development of centralization, the extension of
governmental power, the decay of initiative, and the subordi-
nation of the individual. “Well may Prince Bismarck display
leanings towards State Socialism.” 1 “It is the law of all
organization that as it becomes complete it becomes rigid.” 2
Socialism would be in industry what a rigid instinctive equip-
ment is in animals; it would produce a community of human
ants and bees, and would issue in a slavery far more monot-
onus and hopeless than the present condition of affairs.

Under the compulsory arbitration which socialism would
necessitate, . . . the regulators, pursuing their personal in-
terests, . . . would not be met by the combined resistance of
all workers ; and their power, unchecked as now by refusals
to work save on prescribed terms, would grow and ramify
and consolidate until it became irresistible. ... When from
regulation of the workers by the bureaucracy we turn to the
bureaucracy itself, and ask how it is to be regulated, there is
no satisfactory answer. . . . Under such conditions there
must arise a new aristocracy, for the support of which the
masses would toil; and which, being consolidated, would
wield a power far beyond that of any past aristocracy. 3

Economic relationships are so different from political re-
lationships, and so much more complex, that no government
could regulate them all without such an enslaving bureaucracy.
State interference always neglects some factor of the intricate
industrial situation, and has failed whenever tried; note the
wage-fixing laws of medieval England, and the price-fixing
laws of Revolutionary France. Economic relations must be
left to the automatic self-adjustment (imperfect though it
may be) of supply and demand. What society most wants it

1 Social Statics , p. 329.

2 Sociology, i, 571.

3 HI, 588. There is danger of this in Russia to-day.

416

THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY

will pay for most heavily ; and if certain men, or certain func-
tions, receive great rewards it is because they have taken,
or have involved, exceptional risks or pains. Men as now
constituted will not tolerate a compulsory equality. Until an
automatically-changed environment automatically changes hu-
man character, legislation enacting artificial changes will be
as futile as astrology . 1

Spencer was almost made sick by the thought of a world
ruled by the wage-earning class. He was not enamored of
trade-union leaders so far as he could know them through the
refractory medium of the London Times . 2 He pointed out
that strikes are useless unless most strikes fail; for if all work-
ers should, at various times, strike and win, prices would pre-
sumably rise in accord with the raised wages, and the situation
would be as before . 8 “We shall presently see the injustices
once inflicted by the employing classes paralleled by the in-
justices inflicted by the employed classes.” 4

Nevertheless his conclusions were not blindly conservative.
He realized the chaos and brutality of the social system that
surrounded him, and he looked about with evident eagerness to
find a substitute. In the end he gave his sympathies to the co-
operative movement ; he saw in this the culmination of that pas-
sage from status to contract in which Sir Henry Maine had
found the essence of economic history. “The regulation of
labor becomes less coercive as society assumes a higher type.
Here we reach a form in which the coerciveness has diminished
to the smallest degree consistent with combined action. Each
member is his own master in respect of the work he does ; and
is subject only to such rules, established by majority , of the
members, as are needful for maintaining order. The transi-
tion from the compulsory cooperation of militancy to the vol-
untary cooperation of industrialism is completed .” 5 He

iCf. The Man vs. the State,

2 III, 589.
s III, 545.

* Autob., ii, 433.

8 III, 572.

HERBERT SPENCER

417

doubts if human beings are yet honest and competent enough
to make so democratic a system of industry efficient; but he
is all for trying. He foresees a time when industry will no
longer be directed by absolute masters, and men will no longer
sacrifice their lives in the production of rubbish. “As the
contrast between the militant and the industrial types is indi-
cated by inversion of the belief that individuals exist for the
benefit of the state into the belief that the state exists for the
benefit of individuals; so the contrast between the industrial
type and the type likely to be evolved from it is indicated by
inversion of the belief that life is for work into the belief that
work is for life.” 1

vn. ETHICS : THE EVOLUTION OF MORALS

So important does this problem of industrial reconstruction
seem to Spencer that he devotes to it again the largest section
of The Principles of Ethics (1893) — “this last part of my
task ... to which I regard all the preceding parts as subsid-
iary.” 2 As a man with all the moral severity of the mid-
Victorian, Spencer was especially sensitive to the problem of
finding a new and natural ethic to replace the moral code
which had been associated with the traditional faith. “The
supposed supernatural sanctions of right conduct do not, if
rejected, leave a blank. There exist natural sanctions no less
pre-emptory, and covering a much wider field.” 3

The new morality must be built upon biology. “Accept-
ance of the doctrine of organic evolution determines certain
ethical conceptions.” 4 Huxley, in his Romanes lectures at Ox-
ford in 1893, argued that biology could not be taken as an
ethical guide ; that “nature red in tooth and claw” (as Tenny-
son was phrasing it) exalted brutality and cunning rather
than justice and love; but Spencer felt that a moral code

1 1 , 575 .

2 Ethics, vol. i, p. xiii.

s I, 7.

41, 25.

418

THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY

which could not meet the tests of. natural selection and the
struggle for existence, was from the beginning doomed to lip-
service and futility. Conduct, like anything else, should be
called good or bad as it is well adapted, or mal-adapted, to the
ends of life ; “the highest conduct is that which conduces to the
greatest length, breadth, and completeness of life .” 1 Or, in
terms of the evolution formula, conduct is moral according as
it makes the individual or the group more integrated and co-
herent in the midst of a heterogeneity of ends. Morality, like
art, is the achievement of unity in diversity ; the highest type
of man is he who effectively unites in himself the widest variety,
complexity, and completeness of life.

This is a rather vague definition, as it must be ; for nothing
varies so much, from place to place and from time to time, as
the specific necessities of adaptation, and therefore the specific
content of the idea of good. It is true that certain forms of
behavior have been stamped as good — as adapted, in the large,
to the fullest life — by the sense of pleasure which natural se-
lection has attached to these preservative and expansive ac-
tions. The complexity of modern life has multiplied excep-
tions, but normally, pleasure indicates biologically useful, and
pain indicates biologically dangerous, activities . 2 Neverthe-
less, within the broad bounds of this principle, we find the most
diverse, and apparently the most hostile, conceptions of the
good. There is hardly any item of our Western moral code
which is not somewhere held to be immoral; not only polyg-
amy, but suicide, murder of one’s own countrymen, even of
one’s parents, finds, in one people or another a lofty moral
approbation.

The wives of the Fijian chiefs consider it a sacred duty
to suffer strangulation on the death of their husbands. A
woman who had been rescued by Williams ‘escaped during the
night, and, swimming across the river, and presenting her-

1 1, 22, 26; ii, 8.
a I, 98.

HERBERT SPENCER

419

self to her own people, insisted on the completion of the sac-
rifice which she had in a moment of weakness reluctantly
consented to forego 5 ; and Wilkes tells of another who loaded
her rescuer ‘with abuse , 5 and ever afterwards manifested the
most deadly hatred towards him . 55 1 “Livingstone says of
the Makololo women, on the shores of the Zambesi, that they
were quite shocked to hear that in England a man had only
one wife: to have only one was not ‘respectable . 5 So, too,
in Equatorial Africa, according to Reade, ‘If a man marries,
and his wife thinks that he can afford another spouse, she
pesters him to marry again ; and calls him a “stingy fellow 55
if he declines to do so . 5 2

Such facts, of course, conflict with the belief that there is
an inborn moral sense which tells each man what is right and
what is wrong. But the association of pleasure and pain, on
the average, with good or evil conduct, indicates a measure of
truth in the idea ; and it may very well be that certain moral
conceptions, acquired by the race, become hereditary with the
individual . 3 Here Spencer uses his favorite formula to rec-
oncile the intuitionist and the utilitarian, and falls back once
more upon the inheritance of acquired characters.

Surely, however, the innate moral sense, if it exists, is in
difficulties today ; for never were ethical notions more confused.
It is notorious that the principles which we apply in our ac-
tual living are largely opposite to those which we preach in
our churches and our books. The professed ethic of Europe
and America is a pacifistic Christianity; the actual ethic is
the militaristic code of the marauding Teutons from whom the
ruling strata, almost everywhere in Europe, are derived. The
practice of duelling, in Catholic France and Protestant
Germany, is a tenacious relic of the original Teutonic code . 4
Our moralists are kept busy apologizing for these contradic-

1 1, 469.

2 I, 327.
ft I, 471.

4 1, 323.

420

THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY

tions, just as the moralists of a later monogamic Greece and
India were hard put to it to explain the conduct of gods who
had been fashioned in a semi-promiscuous age . 1

Whether a nation develops its citizens on the lines of Chris-
tian morality or the Teutonic code depends on whether indus-
try or war is its dominant concern. A militant society exalts
certain virtues and condones what other peoples might call
crimes ; aggression and robbery and treachery are not so un-
equivocally denounced among peoples accustomed to them by
war, as among peoples who have learned the value of honesty
and non-aggressim through industry and peace. Generosity
and humanity flourish better where war is infrequent and long
periods of productive tranquillity inculcate the advantages
of mutual aid . 2 The patriotic member of a militant society
will look upon bravery and strength as the highest virtues of
a man; upon obedience as the highest virtue of the citizen;
and upon silent submission to multiple motherhood as the high-
est virtue of a woman . 3 The Kaiser thought of God as the
leader of the German army, and followed up his approbation
of duelling by attending divine service . 4 The North Ameri-
can Indians “regarded the use of the bow and arrow, the
war-club and spear, as the noblest employments of man. . . .
They looked upon agricultural and mechanical labor as de-
grading. . . . Only during recent times — only now that na-
tional welfare is becoming more and more dependent on supe-
rior powers of production,” and these “on the higher mental
faculties, are other occupations than militant ones rising into
respectability.” 6

Now war is merely wholesale cannibalism; and there is no
reason why it should not be classed with cannibalism and un-
equivocally denounced. “The sentiment and the idea of jus-
tice can grow only as fast as the external antagonisms of

1 1, 458.

2 I, 391 f.

3Cf. the philosophy of Nietzsche.

41,318.

a I, 423-4.

HERBERT SPENCER

m

societies decrease, and the internal harmonious cooperations of
their members increase.” 1 How can this harmony be pro-
moted? As we have seen, it comes more readily through free-
dom than through regulation. The formula of justice should
be: “Every man is free to do that which he wills, provided
he infringes not the equal freedom of any other man.” 2 This
is a formula hostile to war, which exalts authority, regimenta-
tion and obedience; it is a formula favorable to peaceful in-
dustry, for it provides a maximum of stimulus with an absolute
equality of opportunity; it is conformable to Christian morals,
for it holds every person sacred, and frees him from aggres-
sion; 3 and it has the sanction of that ultimate judge — natural
selection — because it opens up the resources of the earth on
equal terms to all, and permits each individual to prosper ac-
cording to his ability and his work.

This may seem, at first, to be a ruthless principle; and;
many will oppose to it, as capable of national extension, the
family principle of giving to each not according to his ability
and product, but according to his need. But a society gov-
erned on such principles would soon be eliminated.

During immaturity benefits received must be inversely
proportionate to capacities possessed. Within the family-
group most must be given where least is deserved, if desert
is measured by worth. Contrariwise, after maturity is
reached benefit must vary directly as worth: worth being
measured by fitness to the conditions of existence. The ill-
fitted must suffer the evils of unfitness, and the well-fitted
profit by their fitness. These are the two laws which a
species must conform to if it is to be preserved. ... If,
among the young, benefit were proportioned to efficiency, the
species would disappear forthwith; and if, among adults,
benefit were proportioned to inefficiency, the species would
disappear by decay in a few generations. . . . The only
justification for the analogy between parent and child, and

1 1, 377.

2 II, 46.

« I, 257.

THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY

government and people, is the childishness of the people who
entertain the analogy . 1

Liberty contends with Evolution for priority in Spencer’s
affections ; 2 and Liberty wins. He thinks that as war de-
creases, the control of the individual by the state loses most of
its excuse ; 3 and in a condition of permanent peace the state
would be reduced within Jeffersonian bounds, acting only to
prevent breaches of equal freedom. Such justice should be'
administered without cost, so that wrong-doers might know
that the poverty of their victims would not shield them from
punishment; and all the expenses of the state should be met
by direct taxation, lest the invisibility of taxation should di-
vert public attention from governmental extravagance . 4 But
“beyond maintaining justice, the state cannot do anything else
without transgressing justice ” ; 6 for it would then be protect-
ing inferior individuals from that natural apportionment of
reward and capacity, penalty and incapacity, on which the
survival and improvement of the group depend.

The principle of justice would require common ownership
of land, if we could separate the land from its improvements . 6
In his first book, Spencer had advocated nationalization of the
soil, to equalize economic opportunity; but he withdrew his
contention later (much to the disgust of Henry George, who
called him “the perplexed philosopher”), on the ground that
land is carefully husbanded only by the family that owns
it, and that can rely on transmitting to its own descendants
the effects of the labor put into it. As for private property,
it derives immediately from the law of justice, for each man
should be equally free to retain the products of his thrift.
The justice of bequests is not so obvious ; but the “right to be-
queath is included in the right of ownership, since otherwise

1 I I, 4, 217.

2 Elliott, Herbert Spencer, p. 81.
a I, 148, 420.

4 II, 200.
s II, 222.

*11,81.

HERBERT SPENCER

423

the ownership is not complete.” 1 Trade should be as free
among nations as among individuals ; the law of justice should
be no merely tribal code, but an inviolable maxim of interna-
tional relations.

These are, in outline, the real “rights of man” — the right to
life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness on equal terms with
all. Besides these economic rights, political rights are unim-
portant unrealities . 1 Changes in the form of government
amount to nothing where economic life is not free; and a
laissez-faire monarchy is much better than a socialistic de-
mocracy.

Voting being simply a method of creating an appliance
for the preservation of rights, the question is whether uni-
versality of votes conduces to creation of the best appliance
for the preservation of rights. We have seen that it does
not effectually secure this end. . . . Experience makes ob-
vious that which should have been obvious without experi-
ence, that with a universal distribution of votes the larger
•class will inevitably profit at the expense of the smaller
class. . . . Evidently the constitution of the state appro-
priate to that industrial type of society in which equity is
fully realized, must be one in which there is not a representa-
.. tion of individuals but a representation of interests. ... It
may be that the industrial type, perhaps by the develop-
ment of cooperative organizations, which theoretically,
though not at present practically, obliterate the distinction
between employer and employed, may produce social ar-
rangements under which antagonistic class-interests will
either not exist, or will be so far mitigated as not seriously
to complicate matters. . . . But with such humanity as -now
* exists, and must for a long time exist, the possession of what
are called equal rights will not insure the maintenance of
equal rights properly so-called . 2

Since political rights are a delusion, and only economic
•rights avail, women are misled when they spend so much time

1 II, 120.

2 II, 192-3.

424 THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY

seeking the franchise. Spencer fears that the maternal in-
stinct for helping the helpless may lead women to favor a pa-
ternalistic state. 1 There is some confusion in his mind on
this point; he argues that political rights are of no impor-
tance, and then that it is very important that women should
not have them; he denounces war, and then contends that
women should not vote because they do not risk their lives in
battle 2 — a shameful argument for any man to use who has
been born of a woman’s suffering. He is afraid of women be-
cause they may be too altruistic ; and yet the culminating con-
ception of his book is that industry and peace will develop al-
truism to the point where it will balance egoism and so evolve
the spontaneous order of a philosophic anarchism.

The conflict of egoism and altruism (this word, and some-
thing of this line of thought, Spencer takes, more or less un-
consciously, from Comte) results from the conflict of the indi-
vidual with his family, his group, and his race. Presumably
egoism will remain dominant; but perhaps that is desirable.
If everybody thought more of the interests of others than of
his own we should have a chaos of curtsies and retreats ; and
probably “the pursuit of individual happiness within the lim-
its prescribed by social conditions is the first requisite to the
attainment of the greatest general happiness.” 8 What we
may expect, however, is a great enlargement of the sphere of
sympathy, a great development of the impulses to altruism.
Even now the sacrifices entailed by parentage are gladly made ;
“the wish for children among the childless, and the occasional
adoption of children, show how needful for the attainment of
certain egoistic satisfactions are these altruistic activities.” *
The intensity of patriotism is another instance of the passion-
ate preference of larger interests to one’s immediate concerns.
Every generation of social living deepens the impulses to mu-
ni, 196-7.

2 II, 166.

» I, 196, 190.

41,242-3.

HERBERT SPENCER

m

tual aid . 1 “Unceasing social discipline will so mould human
nature that eventually, sympathetic pleasures will be spon-
taneously pursued to the fullest extent advantageous to all.” 2
The sense of duty which is the echo of generations of compul-
sion to social behavior, will then disappear ; altruistic actions,
having become instinctive through their natural selection for
social utility, will, like every instinctive operation, be per-
formed without compulsion, and with joy. The natural ev-
olution of human society brings us ever nearer to the per-
fect state.

vm. CRITICISM

The intelligent reader, in the course of this brief analysis , 3
will have perceived certain difficulties in the argument, and
will need no more than some scattered reminders as to where
the imperfections lie. Negative criticism is always unpleas-
ant, and most so in the face of a great achievement ; but it is
part of our task to see what time has done to Spencer’s syn-
thesis.

1. First Principles

The first obstacle, of course, is the Unknowable. We may
cordially recognize the probable limitations of human knowl-
edge; we cannot quite fathom that great sea of existence of
which we are merely a transient wave. But we must not dog-
matize on the subject, since in strict logic the assertion that
anything is unknowable already implies some knowledge of
the thing. Indeed, as Spencer proceeds through his ten vol-
umes, he shows “a prodigious knowledge of the unknowable.” 4

1 1, 466.

2 I, 250.

8 The analysis, of course, is incomplete. "Space forbids” (the authoT has
often smiled at this cloak for laziness, but must offer it here), a discussion of
the Education, the Essays, and large sections of the Sociology . The lesson of
the Education has been too well learned; and we require today some corrective
of Spencer’s victorious assertion of the claims of science as against letters and
the arts. Of the essays, the best are those on style, laughter, and music.
Hugh Elliott’s Herbert Spencer is an admirable exposition.

*.bowne: Kant and Spencer , p. 253.

THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY

As Hegel put it : to limi t reason by reasoning is like trying to
swim without entering the water. And all this logic-chopping
about “inconceivability” — how far away that seems to us now,
how like those sophomoric days when to be alive was to de-
bate! And for that matter, an unguided machine is not much
more conceivable than a First Cause, particularly if, by this
latter phrase, we mean the sum total of all causes and forces
in the world. Spencer, living in a world of machines, took
mechanism for granted; just as Darwin, living in an age of
ruthless individual competition, saw only the struggle for ex-
istence.

What shall we say of that tremendous definition of evolu-
tion? Does it explain anything? “To say, ‘first there was
the simple, and then the complex was evolved out of it,’ and so
on, is not to explain nature.” 1 Spencer, says Bergson, re-
pieces, he does not explain ; 2 he misses, as he at last perceives,
the vital element in the world. The critics, evidently, have
been irritated by the definition: its Latinized English is es-
pecially arresting in a man who denounced the study of Latin,
and defined a good style as that which requires the least ef-
fort of understanding. Something must be conceded to Spen-
cer, however; no doubt he chose to sacrifice immediate clarity
to the heed of concentrating in a brief statement the' flow of
all existence. But in truth he is a little too fond of his defini-
tion; he rolls it over his tongue like a choice morsel, and takes
it apart and puts it together again interminably. The weak
point of the definition lies in the supposed “instability of the
homogeneous.” Is a whole composed pf like parts more un-
stable, more subject to change, than a whole composed of un-
like parts? The heterogeneous, as more complex, would
presumably be more unstable than the homogeneously simple.
In ethnology and politics it is taken for granted that heter-
ogeneity makes for instability, and that the fusion of immi-
grant stocks into one national type would strengthen a society.

1 Ritchie: Darwin and Hegel , p. 60.

2 Creative Evolution, p. 64>.

HERBERT SPENCER

m

Tarde thinks that civilization results from an increase of sim-
ilarity among the members of a group through generations of
mutual imitation ; here the movement of evolution is conceived
as a progress towards homogeneity. Gothic architecture is
surely more complex than that of the Greeks; but not neces-
sarily a higher stage of artistic evolution. Spencer was too
quick to assume that what was earlier in time was simpler in
structure; he underrated the complexity of protoplasm, and
the intelligence of primitive man . 1 Finally, the definition
fails to mention the very item which in most minds today is
inalienably associated with the idea of evolution — namely, nat-
ural selection. Perhaps (imperfect though this too would be)
a description of history as a struggle for existence and a
survival of the fittest — of the fittest organisms, the fittest so-
cieties, the fittest moralities, the fittest languages, ideas, phi-
losophies — would be more illuminating than the formula of in-
coherence and coherence, of homo- and heterogeneity, of
dissipation and integration?

“I am a bad observer of humanity in the concrete,” says
Spencer, “being too much given to wandering into the ab-
stract.” 2 * This is dangerous honesty. Spencer’s method, of
course, was too deductive and ci priori, very different from
Bacon’s ideal or the actual procedure of scientific thought.
He had, says his secretary, “an inexhaustible faculty of de-
veloping a, priori and a posteriori, inductive and deductive,
arguments in support of any imaginable proposition ;” 8 and
the a priori arguments were probably prior to the others.
Spencer began, like a scientist, with observation ; he proceeded,
like a scientist, to make hypotheses; but then, unlike a scien-
tist, he resorted not to experiment, nor to impartial observa-
tion, but to the selective accumulat